Response charges home for 2nd Group 1
Charge Forward ‘s brilliant daughter Response made sure of her stamp on the season when she powered home in today’s $350,000 SAJC Robert Sangster S. 1200m G1.
It was her second Group 1 win after she took out the MRC Sir Rupert Clarke S. 1400m G1 in September.
Pictured: Charge Forward’s high-class dual Group 1-winning daughter Response. (PHOTO: Sportpix)
The 4YO mare has given her owners Barry & Midge Griffiths a dream ride since her successful debut at Ballarat in February 2010, compiling a record that now reads 4 wins, 5 placings and more than $760,000 from just 13 starts. She also completed a dream day at Morphettville for the Griffiths, whose familiar blue and yellow-checked colours were earlier carried to victory by their filly Booklet in the SAJC Adelaide Guineas LR.
Bred by Freer Pty Ltd and Andrew & Lasca Bowcock from the Group 1-placed winner Live It Up, Response was purchased by Barry Griffths for $50,000 from the Alanbridge Stud draft in Session 2 of the 2008 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale. She is easily the best of her dam’s seven raced progeny to date, but her half-sister has produced G2 winner Returntosender, and her fourth dam Loyalty was a three-quarter sister to champion Wenona Girl.
From fewer than 70 foals in each of his first three crops, Charge Forward has left five stakeswinners: Response and Group 1 winner Headway from his first crop; G2 winner Shrapnel and dual Group 3 winner Solar Charged from his second crop; and Karaka Million winner Fort Lincoln from his 2008 crop. Shrapnel (3rd, 2010 VRC Ascot Vale S. G1) and Fort Lincoln (2nd, 2011 ARC Diamond S. G1) have also performed at Group 1 level.
A son of Red Ransom and completely free of Northern Dancer, Charge Forward is proving an effective foil for mares by Danehill-line stallions, among them the dams of Headway and Fort Lincoln (both from Flying Spur mares) and Solar Charged, from Danehill’s daughter Soul Singer.
There are seven yearlings by Charge Forward in the 2011 Easter Sale catalogue, four of them in the Arrowfield draft.
