CHROMES AT HOME
UPCOMING WEST COAST SALES TO FEATURE A DOZEN CALIFORNIA-BRED YEARLINGS BY STATE’S ALL-TIME LEADING EARNER, CALIFORNIA CHROME BY LISA GROOTHEDDE
A two-time Eclipse Award winner as Horse of the Year in 2014 and 2016, the Lucky Pulpit stallion has been well-supported by breeders in Kentucky, Chile, and Japan. He has covered full books of mares during each Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere season he has been in service since 2017. Whether communicated in English, Spanish, or Japanese, it is clear that the 2014 Kentucky Derby (G1) winner is making his mark as a young sire. His initial runners, now 3 years old, have won races in the United States, Canada, France, Russia, and Puerto Rico, while his frst South American foal crop has yielded a dozen 2-year-old winners to date. His lifetime average price for yearlings is $52,981, with 85 sold. Te most expensive lit up the 2019 Keeneland September toteboard at $325,000. 22
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en years after his four feet white hooves frst touched the ground at the Harris Farms nursery in California’s Central Valley, four years after he retired from racing competition as the highest-earning Toroughbred runner in North American history with a career bankroll of $14,752,650, and nearly two years after it was announced he had been sold for stallion duties in Japan, world traveler and equine icon California Chrome will be represented for the frst time by his own California-bred ofspring at auction venues. He will have yearlings at sales in his home state and in Washington over the next two months.
With his matinee idol looks, California Chrome shows he’s ready for his “close-up”
Trough July 18, 2021, California Chrome has sired 49 international winners and fve North American black-type horses, led by his grade 1-placed daughter Cilla, a $188,500-earner and multiple stakes winner out of Sittin At the Bar, a three-time Louisiana-bred state champion racemare. It is perhaps with his regionally bred foals such as Cilla that “Chrome” — a working-class hero type who had to compete for the most upper-crust mares in the U.S. against the likes of blue-blooded Triple Crown winners American Pharoah and Justify — might ultimately shine the brightest. PARTNERING UP
Tanks to the innovative California Chrome Foal Share Program, an invita-
CALIFORNIA THOROUGHBRED ❙ August 2021 ❙ www.ctba.com
tion-only initiative created in late 2018 by California Toroughbred Breeders Association member Perry Martin and his late wife, Denise, Toroughbred owners on the West Coast will soon have the opportunity to purchase registered Cal-bred colts and fllies by the most successful California-bred racehorse in history. As early as next year, these Kentucky-sired youngsters will be eligible to compete in restricted state-bred races, a factor that should entice regional buyers to take a closer look at them during the upcoming sales. “Our goal for the foal-share program was to attract exceptional mares to Chrome for his third year standing in Kentucky, when his ‘new sire novelty’ would naturally wear of,” said Martin, the majority shareholder in California Chrome’s former U.S. stallion syndicate.
