Date posted February 18, 2010 | Posted by Andrew Reichard | Filed under
Racing and BreedingSydney, NSW (Feb 18th, 2010) -
“A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country” - St Matthew 13.5
The thoroughbred industry lost one of the most innovative minds in its long history with the passing of Jack Werk in Fremont California on Sunday 15th of February at the age of 65 after a year long battle with cancer.
Jack Werk had operated one of the most successful real estate brokerages in the San Francisco Bay area before turning a hobby interest in thoroughbreds into the full time business which operated as Werk Thoroughbred Consultants (WTC) with Werk as president.
In the early 1980s Werk was one of the first people to realize that the power of modern computers could be turned to revolutionizing the way pedigree crosses were analysed and in conjunction with his friend and IT wizard Rogers Lyons he developed the Werk Nick Rating to measure the frequency of success or otherwise, of sireline/broodmare sireline crosses. In a masterstroke of marketing he decided to denote the rating of the various crosses by using the traditional academic letter grade of A, B C and D with an F added to give a twist of spice. This system was beautiful in its simplicity, easy for even a novice to understand.
Andrew Reichard and Jack Werk (left to right)
Although the system was eagerly embraced by breeders and pedigree analysts, its very simplicity led to it being misunderstood by large sections of the Kentucky breeding establishment. Werk was distrusted as an outsider whose ‘system’, particularly the F rating would be detrimental to business. This perception was not only wrong, but contained a bitter irony, as Jack Werk was without doubt one of the most pragmatic people one could ever wish to meet, the least likely person to advocate slavish devotion to a ‘system’. In fact he often expressed the view that the Werk Nick Rating was just another useful tool for breeders, like having an additional club in your golf bag.
Werk and Lyons also developed the leading pedigree software Compusire in partnership and it is still one of the most useful analytical tools available to breeders. In the late 1980s Werk decided he needed a vehicle to promote his business, thus launching Owner•Breeder (O•B) magazine which featured interesting articles on all aspects of breeding. Werk recruited the legendary journalist Leon Rasmussen to be founding editor, with regular contributors such as Roger Lyons, Joe Bagan, Dr Steven Roman, Rommy Faversham and feature articles from Jack himself which had catchy titles such as “Who’s Hot, Who’s Not” and “Hit The Road Jack”.
The magazine was brilliantly successful, helping to popularize various aspects of pedigree analysis such as nicking, inbreeding, dosage and the “Rasmussen Factor” a type of inbreeding to superior females favoured by Leon Rasmussen and named in honour of him by Jack.
Almost unnoticed during this period, but no less significantly, WTC developed an elegant five generation tabulated pedigree display with a revolutionary system of sibling identifiers which gave an insight into an extra generation in an easy to identify manner. The accompanying inbreeding summary was later tweaked by Lyons, resulting in an inbreeding notation which along with the sibling identifiers has been adopted by most journalists and analysts around the world.
In 2004 Werk launched what was to become his most successful, venture eNicks.com, an online mating assistance facility featuring the famous Werk Nick Rating. The service has almost 1000 stallions registered worldwide including, most of the leading commercial sires in Australia which we feature on our sister website stallions.com.au
As an advisor Werk recommended the mating that produced the Kentucky Derby winner Real Quiet and he was justifiably proud of the photo in the winners’ circle in which he stood alongside owner breeder the late Eduardo Gaviria. Werk’s other accomplishments are too numerous to mention, except to say that he inspired not only competitors, but many other forms of pedigree analysis. Others as well as Werk soon realized there was a market for solid information and that customers were prepared to pay for it. To show how wrong his detractors had been, the long boom in worldwide thoroughbred markets but particularly in the USA, coincided with the newfound popularity of pedigree analysis, even the F Nick. Werk correctly foresaw that people are more willing to invest large sums of money if they have reliable information to base their decisions on. A wide range of additional data actually encouraged investment, not the opposite as some had feared.
Werk had recently announced that his long time friend Sid Fernando, who took over as pedigree analyst for the Daily Racing Form after Leon Rasmussen retired and has since developed his owner pedigree consultancy, has acquired a significant interest in WTC. Sid Fernando had been hand picked to be Werk’s successor and it would be business as usual, “Jack has left the company stronger than it’s ever been” he said earlier this week.
However, describing Jack as an innovator and entrepreneur, the epitome of a successful businessman, by no means tells the whole story. My own association with him dates back over nearly 20 years, including swapping subscriptions, mailing each others magazines to our counterpart’s subscribers, being his representative for Werk Nick Ratings in Australasia and now having the exclusive rights to market and distribute his products. The Mare Match service on stallions.com.au is just one example of this association with almost 100 of Australia’s leading sires on line for clients to get a free Werk Nick rating at the click of a button. Jack also gave valuable advice regarding the final choice of stallions to be included in Jennifer Churchill’s seminal reference GTSOW and contributed the feature essays on Mr Prospector and Storm Cat.
Jack and I also enjoyed each other’s company on his visits to Australia. Jack had a wonderful sense of humor including the ability to laugh at himself. He was not one to take himself too seriously, despite his great store of wisdom. This wisdom was dispensed in a most unassuming manner, his realistic view of events always reached in double quick time.
I found Jack to be a really good guy to do business with, never the slightest hitch in our dealings, but more importantly I found him to be a steadfast and loyal friend. I rang him only a day or two before his passing, catching him full of optimism, full of ideas. Aware of the difficulties that lay ahead with his battle against the cancer, but almost certainly unaware of how very little time was left to him. This time, Jack has hit the road from which there is no return. I wish my old friend a safe journey.
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