BIG CITY LIGHTS IS COUPLE’S LATEST CAL-BRED STAR
Pam and Neal Christopherson, breeders of Big City Lights, visiting Santa Anita
Approaching 50 years in the breeding and racing industry, Pam and Neal Christopherson likely would be considering retirement or at least cutting back. That doesn’t appear to be the case.
It’s foaling time for the owners of Bar C Racing Stables in northeastern Oregon, where the Christophersons currently oversee a dozen broodmares and their yearlings, as well as five stallions.
They’ve built an enviable regional breeding operation over the past 20 years, thanks to the success of their stand-out sire Harbor the Gold, who died in 2020. They sold a yearling for $1.35 million in 2023 at Keeneland to one of the world’s premier racing teams; that colt is now with the internationally recognized Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien. And they bred one of the West Coast’s top current sprinters, the California-bred star Big City Lights.
Inducted into the Washington Racing Hall of Fame in 2023, the Christophersons, who will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in August, are enjoying the ride.
“We both hit 75, so I don’t know how much longer we can do this,” Pam admitted. “We’re taking it year-by-year. It depends on how long they continue to run up here. The Northwest isn’t doing so hot right now.”
Yearling colts graze in a paddock at their Oregon farm
“We’ve had some good luck and had some bad,” said Pam, who along with Neal operate the 40-acre ranch in Hermiston, just seven miles south of the Washington border on the Columbia River. In spite of the obstacles created by the ever-shrinking racing and breeding environment around them, they’ve been at their present location for four decades. They moved there after 10 years in the Oregon outback, where they raised cattle and Quarter Horses on a 2,000-acre spread.
A 5-year-old son of Mr. Big out of their mare Champagne Exchange, Big City Lights is owned by William Peeples. The dark bay is the latest of the Christophersons’ Cal-bred success stories, following Golden State champions California Diamond and Galilean. They sold Galilean for $60,000 at the Barretts select yearling sale in 2017, and he later brought $600,000 from West Point Thoroughbreds and was a six-time stakes winner. Galilean earned the Christophersons the 2019 California Diamond Award for breeding.
Big City Lights, with $578,420 in earnings while winning seven of 13 starts, became the first graded stakes winner bred by the Christophersons when he claimed the Palos Verdes Stakes (G3) a year ago. He concluded last season with a pair of thirds in grade 2 events and a state-bred stakes victory in the Cary Grant at Del Mar in November. After Big City Lights began the 2025 season with a 7 3/4-length victory in the Don Valpredo California Cup Sprint Stakes Jan. 18, Peeples said trainer Richard Mandella was considering a trip to Dubai for the group 1, $2 million Golden Shaheen April 5.
“That would be nice,” said Pam. “But I’m not sure how he would do.”
Two stallions—Uncle Mo and Harbor the Gold—have been instrumental to the Christophersons’ success.
They favor Keeneland’s November breeding stock sale, searching for moderately priced broodmares already in utero to name stallions and selling the offspring as yearlings. They struck gold with a sturdy gray El Prado mare named Fresia, purchased for $35,000 in foal to Uncle Mo in 2015.
Harbored Memories, a half brother to California-bred champion Galilean, is a 7-year-old son of Harbor the Gold—Fresia
That resulted in Galilean. Though that didn’t produce the big dollar return later realized by Quarter Pole Enterprises and consignor Eddie Woods, it convinced the Christophersons that they were onto something good with Uncle Mo.
Fresia was bred to the champion again in 2020 in a foal-sharing deal. They sold that gray filly for $700,000 as a Keeneland yearling to Donald Adam’s Courtlandt Farms. They used their share of the proceeds to purchase a War Front mare named Forever For Now.
Forever For Now, whose third dam is a full sister to Galileo, cost them $210,000 from Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm. She foaled a yearling by Uncle Mo that sold for $1.35 million to M.V. Magnier. Now age 3 and named Example, the colt is with O’Brien in Ireland but has yet to start.
Since then, Forever For Now has produced a 2-year-old Caravaggio colt named Sacred Light, who sold for $110,000 as a yearling at Keeneland last September. The mare also birthed a yearling colt by Mystic Guide and was successfully bred back to Uncle Mo prior to the stallion’s death last December.
The couple keep Forever For Now at Pennland Farm in Kentucky and credit the Penn family for the mare’s success.
The Christophersons have been lucky, they are the first to admit. Consider the standout stud career of Bar C’s deceased Harbor the Gold, a half-brother to champion 2-year-old Boston Harbor, winner of the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1).
A stallion that was practically forced on them, Overbrook Farm’s son of Seeking the Gold arrived in 2005 without fanfare after a knee injury ended his racing career prematurely. Overbrook’s broodmare manager, Bo Davis, who had gotten to know the Christophersons in Kentucky, repeatedly tried to convince them to replace their top stallion, Tiffany Ice, with Harbor the Gold.
“He just wouldn’t stop trying,” Pam said. “He kept telling us that Tiffany Ice, who was 22, was too old, that he wouldn’t last forever.”
Neal finally gave in, telling Davis, “Okay, send him down.”
Pam noted that the first horse Harbor the Gold was bred to, a temperamental mare named Julia Rose, only happened because Tiffany Ice wanted no part of her. The mating resulted in Noosa Beach, a winner from the start who went on to take seven Washington divisional championships over four seasons. Jeffrey and Doris Harwood’s popular homebred won 14 of 22 races, including the Longacres Mile (G3), and earned $524,472.
The Christophersons quickly recognized what the potential Harbor the Gold’s arrival meant, changing their small operation into a perennial leader in the Northwest region’s breeding industry. Harbor the Gold would become a 14-time leading stallion in Oregon and the sire of 29 Washington, Oregon, and California champions, according to the Washington Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association.
Pam says that the progeny of Harbor the Gold, who died at the age of 19, were responsible for 72 stakes wins at Emerald Downs, where he also is the track’s all-time leader in overall victories.
The list of successful runners produced by Harbor the Gold is long.
“He was a fun horse to have around,” Pam said. “He kept us busy, that’s for sure.”