About Me
My name is Gabriel Narancio, and I grew up on a cattle farm in eastern Uruguay. My father — a true burrero — bought his first Thoroughbred in the early 1990s, a horse named El Guacho, who went on to win 14 races. We used to travel to Montevideo to watch him run, and seeing him win so often gave me the illusion that success at the racetrack was easy. Of course, it never is.
After that, my father bred his own horses with mixed success, and I became a dedicated follower of the sport both in Uruguay and internationally. But I never became directly involved myself — only through my father, who still tries his luck today.
My own life drifted toward engineering. I completed a Mechanical Engineering degree and became a professor at the Universidad de la República, where I specialized in Wind Engineering. I also earned a Master of Science in Applied Fluid Dynamics from the same institution.
In 2019, I met a professor from Western University in Canada who had just built the world’s largest tornado simulator. He invited me to pursue a PhD under his supervision, and I accepted. Western is the most prestigious university in the field of Wind Engineering — a discipline founded by Allan G. Davenport, whose work underpins the design of supertall buildings, long-span bridges, and countless wind-sensitive structures.
My PhD focused on the effects of tornadoes on low-rise buildings. After completing it, I joined RWDI, the world’s leading wind engineering consultancy and the firm behind the wind design of 8 of the 10 tallest buildings in the world, including the Burj Khalifa.
Throughout all these years, horse racing has remained an important part of my life. As a scientist, I naturally think about everything in analytical, quantitative, and probabilistic terms. My passion is modeling the real world — understanding how unpredictable systems behave, and how much of that uncertainty can be quantified.
The Thoroughbred industry is full of fragmented data, strong opinions, and untested theories. Markets are often inefficient, influenced by novelty, hype, and short-term trends that create noise and make it difficult for horsemen to make optimal, evidence-based decisions.
During the pandemic, I began exploring how to apply my scientific and engineering background to the Thoroughbred breeding industry. This led me to develop a fully probabilistic framework to analyze the performance of stallions’ progeny — a model designed to support decision-making and risk assessment in every major breeding or buying choice: selecting a stallion for a mare, pricing yearlings, identifying value at auction, detecting early success in stallions, and more.
It’s my way of combining two lifelong passions: the beauty of the Thoroughbred and the power of scientific thinking..