THE racing and bloodstock industry sustained a huge loss when Timeform revealed in autumn 2020 that their much-loved Racehorsesannuals, long dubbed horse racing’s ‘bible’, had been discontinued.

However, veteran racing and pedigrees writer Sieglinde McGee has stepped up in a bid to fill the void, producing a series of annuals that reviewers have called “the new racing bible”, “an upgrade on Timeform”, and “an incredibly valuable addition to the libraries of racing and breeding buffs”.

“A large amount of what would have been European Group 1 Winners of 2020 was close to complete when Timeform made their shock announcement,” said McGee, referring to what would have been the third book in that series, “and being unsure if I could manage to cover all of the Group 2 and Group 3 winners in time, with the same types of analysis, tables and indexes, I thought it safer to keep them as separate books that year and if I could complete both, to rebrand the series.

“Best Racehorses of 2021 and Best Racehorses of 2022, on the other hand, are single volumes and the plan is to continue writing these books for many years to come. The aim is to produce an objective examination of each season’s top flat horses – performance and pedigree.”

The large first section each year examines the racing campaign and/or careers of more than 200 horses, with each essay also analysing their pedigree and providing a three-generation pedigree chart.

The second part presents invaluable data, collated in categories such as listed by sire, grandsire, great-grandsire, dam, broodmare sire, maternal grandsire, grandam, third dam, breeder, owner, trainer, where they were sold (if relevant) and for how much, month of birth, date of earliest win, distance of their group-race wins, and the underfoot conditions.

There are also listings of all the European Group 1 races of the year, all the Group 2 and Group 3 races in Ireland and Britain – with the winners identified – plus all the horses trained in either of those countries who won at those levels somewhere else in the world.

In the latest edition, France and Germany’s Group 2 and Group 3 races are listed for the first time, their winners included in the various data categories, and with the French Group 2 winners reviewed in the main section.

This makes the book an invaluable resource for breeders, agents, and other industry members, plus racing fans.

McGee, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, and the Irish National Stud’s renowned Thoroughbred Breeding Course, has been writing on horse racing and pedigrees since 1989.

She started writing race previews plus auction reports for The Sporting Life, bloodstock sales coverage for the Racing Post and various Irish daily newspapers, plus race reporting, features, and pedigree articles for various other publications.

McGee has written pedigree analysis and stallion review articles for The Irish Field for more than 20 years and is also a former university psychology teacher whose PhD was on equine behaviour, specifically in thoroughbreds.

Best Racehorses of 2022, which was published at the start of April, is a 782-page print-on-demand book only available via Amazon, priced at £30 (€36).

Web: Search amazon.co.uk for ‘Sieglinde McGee’