Author
A Kansas native who has worked in racing journalism since 1974, he is the co-founder of the newsletter Racing Update, and served as the paper's editor until 1993, when he moved to Scotland. Oppenheim developed a reputation as an independent observer of the sales scene in the early 1980's, and he and the staff of Racing Update originated a number of methods of stallion and sales analysis which have been adopted throughout the industry. For the past 10 years he has written a weekly column for TDN, as well as reporting from the major sales. He also works as a consultant, primarily for pedigree analysis, in a private capacity.
Checking in 25th on the freshman sire list is pretty much guaranteed to torpedo a sire’s commercial standing, so when Darley’s Any Given Saturday occupied that spot on the 2011 North American list, it looked like the writing might have been on the wall. Bu we might have been reading the wrong message. With the...
If you own racehorses, even if you’re not in it for the money, it’s very important to know which stallions are the most consistent at siring racehorses which earn the most money. That’s what APEX sire ratings do. We take all the starters in five different jurisdictions (North America; Great Britain/Ireland, tallied together; France; Germany;...
We’ve long taken the view that we don’t really have a very firm idea of where a sire figures in the scheme of things until the end of the year its first 4-year-olds have raced. Of course commercial pressures require us to take a view once a sire has runnersat all–especially if they do well...
Back in those heady days about 10 years ago, when everything was cooking and nobody imagined there was a huge collapse in the offing, I sat next to a young guy–about 30, I guess–who was a hedge fund manager, on a flight from Newark to Seattle. Interesting, I said; I’m into research myself…
As was previewed by last August’s mid-year 2012 APEX figures, the Japanese sire sensation Deep Impact (Sunday Silence), whose first foals were only 4-year-olds of 2012, has finally toppled eight-time champion APEX sire A.P. Indy as the Leading Sire by A Runner Index during the last seven years (2006-2012, though Deep Impact has only had...
As you may have read, voting on the 2012 Eclipse Awards is underway, and in fact closes tomorrow. I have to admit to stirring up a little controversy in this process by pointing out, both in this paper last…