CALIFORNIA CHROME

In 1955, a chestnut-coated “California comet” named Swaps streaked from Santa Anita to the finish line at Churchill Downs, beating the favored Nashua in the Kentucky Derby. Fifty-nine years later, Swaps’s then-18-year-old exercise rider, Art Sherman, is the trainer of the latest chestnut California comet, the appropriately named California Chrome, the smashing winner of the Santa Anita Derby on April 5.

California Chrome also sports an important pedigree connection to Swaps. His dam, Love the Chase, by Not For Love, is inbred to champion Numbered Account, by Buckpasser out of Intriguing, whose sire was none other than Swaps. Thus, there are two crosses of Swaps in the sixth generation of California Chrome’s pedigree, and that is far from the only fascinating facet of a very, well, intriguing pedigree.

Bred in California by his owners, Perry Martin and Steve Coburn, California Chrome is the first foal out of Love the Chase, a Maryland-bred daughter of leading Maryland sire Not For Love, by Mr. Prospector. Not For Love, a full brother to champion Rhythm and to Grade 3 winner and great broodmare Get Lucky, was a stakes-placed son of Grade 1 winner Dance Number, a half-sister to Grade 1 winner and top sire Private Account as well as another top Maryland sire, Polish Numbers, by Danzig

Read the full article at http://www.drf.com/news/sparkman-another-california-comet-emerges