Pedigreeexpert Les Brinsfield died 78 Years old.

Les Brinsfield, a renowned pedigree consultant and pioneer in using computers to analyze breeding patterns and matings, died in Lexington Aug. 3 at age 78, according to his family.

Brinsfield developed his passions for pedigrees and technology and he initially began delving into pedigrees as a way to improve his handicapping, according to his daughter Megan Brinsfield.  In the meantime, he immersed himself in the world of the personal computer

Brinsfield moved to Lexington in 1988 and made an immediate deep dive into the world of Thoroughbred breeding. He brought to Kentucky a pedigree research tool he created called PC Pedigree, which he sold to breeders worldwide.

"As far as I know, he was the first person to put a database of pedigrees on a computer," said pedigree analysts Alan Porter. "The fact that you could get a six cross pedigree up on a screen, made looking at pedigrees faster that it ever had been. It took it into the computer age. Until his original PC Pedigree, I (working for Bert Firestone then), and everyone else used to do matings on paper generally using split pedigree books, presumably in a way unchanged since Tesio, or even before." 

"PC Pedigree was perhaps "the" ancestor conceptually of most pedigree research software. The ability to look at so many more pedigrees so quickly certainly impact my work and learning curve," Porter said.

Over the years, Brinsfield also created online forums for pedigree researchers to share ideas and helped organize a pedigree conference in Lexington.

He operated his first office out of a rented downtown studio at the corner of West Second Street and Upper Street in the same building was the office of fellow pedigree consultant John Prather. The two of them eventually formed a business called Pedigree Group. Together they worked with Prestonwood Farm to shape the first book for a new sire named Distorted Humor .

In a pedigree profile of Flower Alley written by Avalyn Hunter for BloodHorse, Prather gives credit to Brinsfield for focusing heavily on mares carrying strains of La Troienne. Distorted Humor's first crop of 66 foals included 20 whose dams carried La Troienne in their pedigrees. Twelve of Distorted Humor's first foals went on to become stakes winners, and seven of those stakes winners traced in blood back to La Troienne, including 2003 dual classic winner Funny Cide, 2002 Spinaway Stakes (G1) winner Awesome Humor, and 2003 Peter Pan Stakes (G2) winner Go Rockin' Robin.