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When possible, we prefer to plan our matings to mimic something that has already worked for a mare’s female family (as opposed, for instance, to relying too heavily on “nick” rating systems). With Wasabi’s new acquisition Desert Rendezvous, there were two sire-lines that jumped out at us for their recent success on her page: Ghostzapper has sired her multiple G1-winning half-sister Better Lucky and her stakes-winning half-brother Final Frontier, and Medaglia d’Oro is the sire of the G3-winning Prevalence out of Desert Rendezvous’s half-sister, is the sire of her winning half-sister Lucknow (the dam of ‘23 G3-placed Groveland), and is the grandsire (via his son Bolt d’Oro) of the ‘23 stakes winner and G3-placed Bold Discovery further back in the family.
Given that Desert Rendezvous’s first two foals for Godolphin are already by Ghostzapper, and given that Medaglia d’Oro’s grandson Dr. Schivel is one of the incoming stallions that we’re most excited about for 2024, we’re going to take Desert Rendezvous to him at Taylor Made this spring.
In addition to being an outstanding physical specimen with tons of scope and wonderful balance, Dr. Schivel was a G1W at 2, a G1W at 3 over older horses when he was also just nosed out of the win in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, G1P at 4 in a single start, and a G1P/G2W at 5 — showing plenty of class and some durability. He is also by one of the hottest stallions of the last year or two in Violence, whose other sons at stud now include Volatile and Forte. Violence himself was a G1W at 2YO by Medaglia d’Oro, and MDO’s presence here is what led us to consider Dr. Schivel for Desert Rendezvous in the first place, as noted above.
Dr. Schivel’s imposing physical will make him a great choice for Desert Rendezvous, who is a good-sized, well-made mare that won’t be too far off of a like-to-like matchup for him, and won’t mind adding a bit of his leg.
Violence has two winners out of Hard Spun mares so far, including a black-type placed earner of over $200k, and the MDO/Seeking the Gold (the latter being Desert Rendezvous’s broodmare sire) cross produced G1W/sire Warrior’s Reward and G3W/sire Golden Lad.
There are a couple of other pedigree patterns in this mating that we like, as well. First, both Violence’s dam and Desert Rendezvous’s dam are by sons of Mr. Prospector out of mares by Storm Cat. Then, Dr. Schivel’s broodmare sire is a son of Mining, who is bred on the same Mr. Prospector/Buckpasser cross as the aforementioned Seeking the Gold. And finally, this foal will be inbred 5×4 to Damascus — inbreeding to whom has been a successful tactic producing stakes winners at a rate above the breed average.
All of which gives us hope that the foal from this pairing will prove to be plenty successful when the time comes!