Matchem Racing hit the headlines recently when Fontiton demolished the field in the $250,000 Inglis Banner race.

They use prediction modelling including DNA and cardio testing to try and identify racehorses that have the genetic and physical characteristics to become elite performers.

The technology has been developed by Byron Rogers who spent eight years at Arrowfield Stud in Australia as Stallion Nominations and Bloodstock Manager where he was part of the team responsbile for guiding the stud careers of Redoute’s Choice, Flying Spur and Danzero amongst others. He also has extensive experience in the USA and has been based in Kentucky for a number of years. Combine that hands-on experience with a computer science background and you get a very interesting way of assessing yearlings.

Byron's on the podcast this week to explain their unique approach.

Punting Insights You'll Find:

The varying characteristics of sprinters and stayers

A very simple yet often overlooked breeding factor

The underestimated importance of the trainer effect

Whether any of this applies to the betting market

Today’s Guest:

Byron Rogers - Matchem Racing

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: Can you start by filling in the listeners on a bit about your background just to let them know your experience in the racing industry. Then, we’ll talk about Matchem Racing and obviously Fontiton being the headline horse at the moment.

Byron Rogers: I started off working at Arrowfield Stud many moons ago. Going back to when Redoutes Choice and Flying Spur were just starting their careers back then. Actually I'd been to university and I'd done some computer science background at University so I've worked with data and all that stuff at University.

I’d been doing stuff with various companies up here in America and got more interested in how really to measure a horse. If you do the same thing that everyone else is doing you get the same results. I took the view of let's try something different.

We started looking at measuring cardiovascular capacity in horses. That's where we started with it and we took an ultrasound and just measured the cardiovascular capacity; how big the heart is. That’s what led me into then looking to genetics as to why these horses were running certain distances.

Obviously my background at University of Technology I took that feel of data, aAt the end of the day when you start measuring everything it all just becomes down to data and data modeling is what I was good at.

We started to build more and more data. We got to, geez; we’re now at 3500 data base where we've got known racing outcomes. We've been able to model different things in terms of how far does a horse really want to run and that's just not genetic in terms of that you can get these horses that are genetically milers but they end up being sprinters because they’ve got slightly different cardiovascular capacities.

We've done a whole lot of modeling on really what makes a race horse tick. Now, it’s been four or five years we've been doing that. We've had a lot of success up here in America with horses like Verrazano who was a horse we bought as a yearling, helped selected a yearling for clients. New Year’s Day who won the Breeders’ Cup juvenile two years ago. This year we had two runners in Breeders’ Cup races out in California.

We've taken that technology and said what is the best application for it and that's where Matchem Racing came from and that's where we are today.

David Duffield: With the data base that you’d mentioned of 3,500 racehorses is that on a global basis?

Byron Rogers: Yes, that's horses all around. We've got horses like Winchester who raced in America here and ended up racing in Australia. We've got horses like Icon Project that are all American based horses and all these, very good Tis Now and a bunch of those horses. We’ve also got horses in Australia like Rebel Raider and horses in Japan and horses in Europe.

Yeah,