CALIFORNIA Chrome had a training spin at the weekend when he sauntered to yet another stakes win in a fairly non-competitive conditions race at Los Alamitos. The Winter Challenge Stakes was worth just $50,000 to the winner and victory boosted the winner’s career totals to just over $14.5 million.

The race was set up to give California Chrome a run ahead of his challenge for the $12 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream next month, on what will be the five-year-old’s 27th and final start before he commences stud duties at Taylor Made Farms. His stud fee has been set at $40,000.

Winner of 16 of his starts to date, California Chrome won this year’s Dubai World Cup and this was added to previous Grade 1 wins in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, Santa Anita Derby, Hollywood Derby, Pacific Classic Stakes and Awesome Again Stakes. He was also recently denied a coveted Breeders’ Cup success by Arrogate in the Grade 1 Classic.

Last month at the Fasig-Tipton November Sale, held just days after the Breeders’ Cup, Irish bloodstock agent John McCormack paid $1.95 million for Love The Chase, the winning dam of California Chrome. She was carrying to the leading American sire Tapit, who is full for 2017 at a fee of $300,000. Tapit is a son of Pulpit, who is also responsible for Lucky Pulpit, sire of California Chrome.

The first foal of his dam, California Chrome is followed by two full-sisters who have both been placed. The yearling out of Love The Chase is an own-brother to California Chrome and is named Faversham. Love The Chase is due to foal in mid-January.

Rated the Horse of the Year and the champion of his sex and age at three, California Chrome is not the first champion in his family, but you have to go back to 1977 and the fifth remove of his pedigree to find the other, the Champion Older Dirt Female and Grade 1 Vanity Handicap winner Cascapedia. All the other stakes winners in the interim have been of a minor nature.

Love The Chase is a daughter of the Mr Prospector sire Not For Love. He never won a stakes race and stood for 18 seasons at stud, siring a respectable 79 blacktype winners and they included a handful that were successful at up to Grade 2 level.

His daughters have also bred some stakes winners, but California Chrome towers above the rest in terms of ability.

Love The Chase is one of three winning offspring of the Polish Numbers (by Danzig) mare Chase It Down.

She too was a winner and one of her other successful progeny, a son of Grade 1 winner Albert The Great, won twice in Russia. California Chrome’s third dam was a dual stakes-winner at Aqueduct and that daughter of Sir Ivor bred four winners, the best of which was the multiple stakes-winning El Gran Senor mare Amourette. She, in turn, bred Alette, a minor stakes winner by Lemon Drop Kid.