Time and again, you’ve heard us mention the importance of mating a young mare to a proven stallion during the first couple years of her breeding career. Doing so helps give the mare owner the best possible gauge on the mare’s abilities as a producer, since if you breed her repeatedly to unproven stallions that ultimately end up as failures, it would be unclear whether a lack of success was due to the contribution of those stallions, or her own shortcomings.
For the successful racemare C’est Mardi, after a visit to a first-year stallion during her own maiden season at stud, she now gets a shot with the proven veteran value sire Dialed In at Darby Dan Stud in 2024.
The sire of 2023 Grade 1 winner Defunded and this year’s multiple classic-placed filly Gambling Girl among his 24 career stakes winners, Dialed In sports a strong 1.36 to 1.15 AEI/CI ratio, which means that he moves his mares up and that his foals do better than his mates’ foals by other stallions. Once the champion freshman sire of his crop, he has two stakes-winning juvenile to his credit already in 2023, and continues to be well-supported at stud (96 2YOs of ‘23, with 74 yearlings registered already, and 143 mares bred in 2022) and in the sales ring (35 yearlings sold in ‘23 for just shy of a $50k average conceived off his advertised fee of $15,000).
In addition to his own stats, Dialed In works with C’est Mardi specifically for a couple of reasons:
- A six-time winner around a mile at 4 and 5YO, C’est Mardi is a leggy, attractive daughter in the mold of her sire, the two-time Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Tiznow. As such, she should suit the medium-sized Dialed In well and inject a little bit of size into their foal, while he will hopefully contribute a touch of precocity.
- Dialed In has produced 4 winners from 7 runners out of Tiznow mares, and C’est Mardi’s half-sister is the dam of a black-type placed, six-figure earner by Dialed In — which to us is much more important than the “D” rating for this match on TrueNicks.
- There are several additional black-type runners on C’est Mardi’s page by Seattle Slew-line stallions (Dialed In’s sire Mineshaft being a son of Slew’s HOTY and leading sire son AP Indy), including a pair of graded winners.
- C’est Mardi’s own dam is by the Storm Cat son Storm Creek, meaning that the foal from this mating will have Storm Cat 3×4 in its pedigree. No fewer than five of Dialed In’s stakes winner carry inbreeding to Storm Cat in the first four generations, while four more are inbred to his sire Storm Bird.
All of which, we believe, makes Dialed In an excellent match for C’est Mardi in 2024 as we look to help her prove her worth as a producer!