Corona Chick was one of the greatest racing distaffers and broodmares to ever rule the track.
Owned since 2001 by Julianna Hawn Holt of Texas, Corona Chick was bred by Robert D. “Strawberry Bob” Etchandy of California. The mare is one of eight champions by Chicks Beduino and is one of two champions out of 2001 broodmare of the year Sizzling Lil, the Sizzle Te mare who also produced First Down Dash’s champion daughter Corona Kool.
Trained by Frank Monteleone, Corona Chick was the racing champion 2-year-old, champion 2-year-old filly and champion 3-year-old in 1991-92. Compiling a record of 18-15-2-0 while earning $591,326, Corona Chick won the Grade 1 Ed Burke, Kindergarten and Dash For Cash futurities, Governor’s Cup Futurity (RG2) and Governor’s Cup Derby (RG1), was second in the Southern California Derby (G2) and finished off the board only once in her life.
Not that the diminutive, dark-brown mare displayed that kind of talent to begin with. Explosive and hard to handle at first, Corona Chick threw her riders time and again before finally submitting to saddle.
The filly threw away her first big chance, when she blew up in the gate for eventual champion Ed Grimley’s Bay Meadows Futurity (G1). But then champion jockey Kip Didericksen, who had ridden Corona Chick in her first two races, took over the mount again. The mare went unbeaten the rest of the year, winning her eight consecutive races by an average 1 1/4 lengths. Then she won five of six races the following season.
“She was very, very fast,” recalls Didericksen, who rode her in all but two of her races. “All I had to do was keep her quiet – she could get real hot-headed. But she was amazingly little and amazingly fast. In some of her races, she was the fastest horse I ever rode.”
After reigning on the track, Corona Chick birthed a line of fashionably royal heirs. Carrying each of her 16 foals to term, Corona Chick produced four stakes winners, seven other winners and the earners of the all-time record $3,625,157 from her 14 starters.
In 2011, after birthing her final foal, the track-record-setting champion and 1997 broodmare of the year was pensioned at age 22 to spend her golden years at ease on the Hawn Holt Cross Triangle Ranch at Blanco, Texas. Corona Chick died in June 2013 and is buried on the ranch.