In pondering a ‘25 mate for Sharma, the newest addition to the broodmare band of our friends at Wasabi Ventures Stallions, we were interested first and foremost in a proven stallion, given that this will be just her second foal. (Especially since her first foal is by an as-yet-unproven sire in Maxfield, even though we love Maxfield and think he has a huge shot to make it.) We were also targeting a stallion with plenty of commercial upside, given the class and depth of her female family, and — of course — a horse that would make sense given what her family has already produced. The overlap of all those targets is Mill Ridge’s exciting Oscar Performance, who continues to go from strength-to-strength in his breeding career.
The #10 second-crop sire in ‘23, he climbed to #5 on the third-crop list in ‘24, despite having between 79 and 237 fewer named foals to his credit than the four above him. But even with that many fewer foals (and thus significantly fewer runners), Oscar Performance still tied Justify and Good Magic at the top of the class with five individual Graded Stakes Winners to his credit! His black-type winners to runners ratio (he had ten BTWs in ‘24) of 7.4% also dwarfs those of Justify, Good Magic, City of Light, Mendelssohn, Bolt d’Oro, etc, etc, and he added seven more black-type horses on top of that. This success is reflected in his Average Earnings Index of 1.62, which sits above his mates’ Comp Index of 1.58, demonstrating that he’s moving his mares up.
Also reflective of Oscar Performance’s excellent early results at stud is the fact that his yearlings in 2024 averaged a whopping $145,895, off just a $12,500 stud fee!
Oscar Performance himself was strictly a turf runner — albeit a very good one! At 2 he won the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, at 3 the G1 Belmont Derby and G1 Secretariat, and at 4 he added the G1 Woodbine Turf Mile. And he set the world record for a mile on turf in 1:31.23. As a son of repeated leading turf sire Kitten’s Joy and out of a mare by turf champion Theatrical, this tendency was not unexpected.
But the reason that Oscar Performance is so commercially strong, and, indeed, the reason that his stud fee has climbed to $45,000 in ‘25, is that he has proven a far more versatile sire than one could have anticipated. Although his G1-winning son Trikari is among his outstanding offspring on turf, and Endlessly scored graded victories on turf and all-weather, Oscar Performance’s G2-winning daughter Red Carpet Ready is a dirt sprinter and his son Tumbarumba is a G3 winner on dirt. So far, then, the Oscar Performance offspring can really do it all.
This jives perfectly with Sharma’s pedigree. She is a daughter of the brilliant racehorse and sire Quality Road, a record-setting dirt horse but sire of top-level winners on both turf and dirt, much like his own sire, Elusive Quality. Sharma’s dam is the brilliant dirt black-type winner in Kareena, by the versatile Medaglia d’Oro (himself a top-class dirt horse but sire of top-level winners on all surfaces), and Kareena is a half-sister to the Japanese dual-surface G1 winner Mozu Ascot (by Frankel).
So this foal should really be able to go either way (or really, all ways) in terms of its preferred surface when it gets to the races, and has every right to be of the highest class, as well.
As mentioned just above, Sharma’s dam is a half-sister to a multiple G1 winner by Frankel, who is a son of Galileo, by Sadler’s Wells. One of the reasons that we like Oscar Performance for Sharma is that he also traces in tail-male to Sadler’s Wells (Kitten’s Joy is by El Prado, a son of Sadler’s Wells). (There’s also a G1-caliber runner deep on Sharma’s page by Kitten’s Joy himself.)
Interestingly, El Prado is also the sire of Sharma’s broodmare sire Medaglia d’Oro, meaning the foal from this pairing will have 3×4 inbreeding to that Irish Champion 2YO — and inbreeding to El Prado in the third and fourth generations has resulted in a strong 5.6% black-type winners-to-runners ratio, including a pair of graded winners. So that’s another factor in favor of this pairing.
TrueNicks also likes it, rating the match of Oscar Performance with Gone West-line mares an “A++” thanks to three black-type winners from 12 runners, including recent G3 winner Dashman.
Finally, on physicals this mating should work a treat as well — Sharma is nicely-made and well-balanced, but just a tad medium-sized, whereas Oscar Performance should add plenty of leg and substance to their foal!