Chef-de-Race: Carson City
ch.h., 1987 (Mr. Prospector-Blushing Promise, by Blushing Groom)
(February 13, 2007)

Carson City, which died in 2004, has emerged as one of the most successful sons of the Brilliant/Classic chef-de-race and extraordinary sire of sires, Mr. Prospector.  Through 2006 Carson City had sired at least 84 stakes winners including Grade 1 winners Carson Hollow, City Band, City Zip, Cuvee, Flying Chevron and Pearl City.  Among his daughters' produce of over 30 stakes winners are ill-fated Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro and Grade 1 winner/2007 Kentucky Derby hopeful Stormello.  Together, his sons at stud and his producing daughters account for the winners of at least two dozen graded stakes in North America.

He has been among the top 22 sires on the general sire list for ten consecutive years and among the top ten three times.  Similarly, he has established himself as a consistent and superior broodmare sire, rising as high as 9th on the general broodmare sire list in 2006.

Carson City, which was the only foal from his dam, raced for two seasons winning the Grade 2 Sapling Stakes as a two-year-old and both the Grade 2 Fall Highweight Handicap and the Grade 3 Boojum Handicap at three, never racing beyond a sprint distance.  His lifetime record was 15 starts, six times first and two times second with earnings of $306,240.  He was weighted on the 1989 Experimental Free Handicap at 116 pounds, ten below juvenile champion and highweight Rhythm.

As a sire, Carson City consistently transmitted his confirmed sprint characteristics to his offspring, with 76% of their major open stakes wins at less than a mile.  This compares to only 31% sprint wins in the broader population of open stakes winners in our database.  The distribution for Carson City stakes wins by distance is displayed below.  For further comparison we have included the general distribution by distance for all stakes wins in the database.

The distribution for Carson City is dramatically skewed to the shorter races.  In fact, to date there have been only three major stakes wins by Carson City progeny as far as nine furlongs.  Among all sires of North American open stakes winners in the database with at least 40 progeny stakes wins he has the shortest average winning distance (AWD) by far at 6.62 furlongs.  The next shortest AWD is 6.98 furlongs for Valid Appeal.  Additionally, only 3.4% of Carson City's progeny stakes wins are on the turf compared to 30.6% in the database and his two-year-olds account for 33.7% of his progeny stakes wins compared to just 13.1% in the database.

Carson City's AWD as a broodmare sire is longer at 7.71 furlongs which is still well below the database average of 8.10 furlongs.  Since he is a generation farther back and represents the purest form of speed, a shift toward the average is inevitable.  Similarly, his sons at stud, which include both Five Star Day and City Zip among the 75 leading sires of 2006 from only two racing crops, have an AWD of just 7.21 furlongs.

These data paint a portrait of a sire who not only is passing along exceptional speed characteristics, but is doing so in a thoroughly consistent manner and beyond the first generation through his sons and daughters.  This prepotence for type is the primary requirement for chef-de-race status.

Nevertheless, if the present Dosage figures for descendants of Carson City already fit the population model and adequately explain their performance traits, there is no reason to invoke an additional aptitudinal influence.  In that case we would conclude that more remote prepotent influences are sufficient.  The actual data will tell us what we need to know.

Combined data derived from open stakes winners by Carson City, out of his daughters and by his sons at stud are as follows, where # is the number of races in the sample, ADP is the average Dosage Profile, ADI is the average Dosage Index and ACD is the average Center of Distribution:

Based on additional data correlating the distance/Dosage characteristics of well over 200 sires that individually have at least 25 progeny open stakes wins in North America, the predicted ADI at an AWD at 6.90 furlongs is 4.66.  The predicted ACD is 0.98.  These figures are far different from the actual figures for descendants of Carson City found in the previous table.  However, if we assign Carson City as a Brilliant/Intermediate chef-de-race, the revised figures become:

The revised numbers are much better aligned to the figures for the general population of stakes winners with similar distance characteristics.  Similarly, the average Dosage Profile, now dominated by a Brilliant aptitudinal group representation, is more suitable to runners that mature early and win at shorter distances on the dirt.  In fact, more Carson City descendants display this performance profile than typical runners whose pedigree also is strongly dominated by speed, suggesting the speed influence from Carson City is profound and reproducible.

If we confine the revision only to direct runners by Carson City, we obtain the following result that also seems to make more sense.

A further consequence of the proposed assignment is that Carson City's Dosage Profile (DP) contribution as a sire changes from 10-2-9-1-0 (equivalent to DI 3.00 and CD 0.95) to 18-10-9-1-0 (equivalent to DI 5.91 and CD 1.18).  It is interesting to note that the new "down-the-ladder" DP pattern where B points>I points>C points>S points>P points is found among runners with the highest percentage of wins in sprints and the lowest on turf.

It seems apparent that a speed influence from Carson City is being expressed through at least two generations and that the revised Dosage figures for his descendants are well-matched with those of the general population having a similar performance profile.  From this we may conclude that previous Dosage analysis of pedigrees in which Carson City is prominent did not adequately acknowledge the prepotent nature of his speed contribution.  On that basis we feel confident in assigning him a Brilliant/Intermediate designation as the 207th chef-de-race.