A Monday at Warnambool probably isn't where you would expect to see a high profile yearling make his debut. Today though we see the Commands colt, Zeb Force appear for the first time. Zeb Force is by Commands out of the Zabeel mare, Zebizan making him a three quarter brother to the stakes placed Holidazzle by Flying Spur. Zebizan is a well related mare, being a full sister to Cronus, Pravda and Millyet, the dam of the great filly Samantha Miss.
So with such a family we would expect Zeb Force to be an above average racing prospect, right? This isn't necessarily the case, and the pedigree tells us an interesting tale. We see that his pedigree has relatively little inbreeding, although we do see duplications of Northern Dancer, Natalma, Fair Trial and Grey Sovereign. Critically, though, we see that none of these are through the female tail line of either the sire or dam. When we consider that Commands is from the wonderful female line of Eight Carat, and Zeb Force has a strong female line, this is of concern. If we look at the pedigree of his three quarter brother we see that the feature is a duplication of Sir Ivor through his duaghter, Grand Luxe the second dam of Flying Spur, and Sir Tristram, the grandsire of Zabeel. In terms of dosage we see that Zeb Force has a profile that reads [0.54/2.57] [9-17-20-0-4] as compared to Holidazzle [0.46/2.61] [5-24-23-0-4]. While on face value the overall balance may appear similar, but we need to consider that not only is there a greater brilliant contribution, but we also need to recognise that Flying Spur has produced runners who get over ground on a more regular basis than Commands whose progeny are largely sprinting types. Commands is classified as a Brilliant/Intermediate chef-de-race, while Flying Spur is designated an Intermediate influence.
Given the quality of the family, and a suspicion that today's field will not be overly strong, we would certainly expect Zeb Force to be winning. However, we will be suprised if he was to match the performance of his impressive family.
[caption id="attachment_105" align="alignnone" width="300"]
Zeb Force as a yearling at Inglis Easter 2012[/caption]