Breeding


Pedigree Analysis First Sweet Midnite: This Classic Distance Runner Comes From A Classic Family
First Sweet Midnite winning the Black Gold 440 Championship Futurity(RG3).

© Coady Photography
Pedigree Analysis First Sweet Midnite: This Classic Distance Runner Comes From A Classic Family

By Andrea Caudill

Q-RACING JOURNAL—NOVEMBER 17, 2015—There are only a few stakes races each year that tests freshman American Quarter Horses at the classic 440 yard distance – four, to be exact. On Saturday, Oklahoma’s Will Rogers Downs played host to the only one in Oklahoma, and saw First Sweet Midnite take the $310,000 Black Gold 440 Futurity Championship (RG3) in :21.656.

This is the first stakes win in five career starts for First Sweet Midnite, who now marks career earnings of $134,870. The horse was bred by Dustin and Rusty Carpenter of Norman, Oklahoma, and is owned by Bret Carpenter. He is by Sweet First Down and out of the Special Leader mare Midnite Soiree.

Sweet First Down is a veteran son of all-time leading sire First Down Dash out of the Zevi (TB) mare Sweet Bye And Bye owned by Erin Chrisman Goings of Elsie, Nebraska. The Grade 1-placed runner has sired 138 winners from 264 starters, and the earners of more than $4.7 million, lead by the likes of A Toss Up ($502,079), Possum Fust ($299,308) and I Am That Hero ($225,168). He stands at Abraham’s Equine Clinic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Sweet First Down is out of Sweet Bye And Bye, a product of the Barley & Sharp breeding program and the mare family that produced recent Merial Distaff Challenge Championship (G1) winner Sudden Separation.

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