I was poking around a couple of the online Thoroughbred listing sites last evening and a name jumped out at me. Charedi's Gold (pedigree) has been in my Virtual Stable for years because her pedigree incorporates several of my favorite bloodlines. (If "Virtual Stable" is new to you, check out this post I wrote last year.)
Charedi's Gold initially caught my eye several years ago because she descends from the 1-r family of Aspidistra, one of my favorite female lines.
She was the only foal from the unplaced Majestic Light mare Charedi's Light. Because Charedi's Gold was unraced, the catalog page is painfully bare on top, but it quickly improves with the second dam. As her name implies, Charedi's Gold is from the Charedi branch of family 1-r that has also produced important sires Unbridled, Cahill Road, and Pentelicus. As a daughter of Forty Niner, Charedi's Gold is herself bred on a Mr. Prospector cross that echoes the line of Fappiano in these sires.
Charedi's Gold, who is listed in an EquineNow ad for a $1,000 pricetag in Michigan, never ran but she was nonetheless valued by a Keeneland November bidder at $36,000 as a 5-year-old while in foal with a Williamstown filly (WIlliamstown's stud fee that year was $7,500). Amazingly, it would be her fourth foal since she began producing at age 3. Her 11th and most recent foal came in 2007 at age 14. There was no report in 2008 and the mare is listed as open in 2009. I don't know her reproductive health -- but I'm glad that she's at least had a couple of years off to rebuild from the physically taxing job of gestation.
So what does the mare's catalog page show for her 11 foals? Thus far, eight have raced and seven are winners, with one winner of multiple Michigan restricted stakes and another placed in a similar contest. Her stakes winner, Charedi's Peak, earned a bit over $190,000; the rest of her foals have been in the sub-$60,000 range.
Her better foals are inbred to either Tom Rolfe or In Reality -- Charedi's Gold herself has Tom Rolfe as broodmare sire of her sire Forty Niner, and In Reality is the sire of her second dam Charedi. To be fair, these duplications could be coincidental and other than in the case of Charedi's Peak (5 x 4 to Tom Rolfe) they haven't yielded much above average. Still, the pattern exists and is worth consideration. After a bit of playing around with the pedigrees on paper, I've narrowed my choice for a hypothetical mating down to one stallion: Take Me Out (SRO). In addition to creating a 3 x 4 cross to Tom Rolfe in the hypo-mating, Take Me Out introduces Dr. Fager (broodmare sire of his sire Cure the Blues), a pedigree influence widely credited for the success of Fappiano and his sons.
So, what do you think? Is Charedi's Gold a candidate for future broodmare duties? Who would you cross her with (and why)? Or -- is it time to retire her?
