by Alan Leavitt

The best part about this writing job is the long distance friendships I have made with other breeding enthusiasts. I am struck by how well Peter Denmen and Pat Schmidt know harness racing here in the United States, even though they both live in Australia.

Denmen just told me about another inbred Stakes winner, the 2 year old filly Predict The Future. For those who don’t follow the races as closely as him, Predict The Future just won the final of the Maryland Sire Stakes.

Predict The Future is from All In, Western Hanover, and Jo Pa’s Eat O, also from Western Hanover. In technical terms, she’s 2 X 2 at Western Hanover, which in a sense goes beyond being inbred to being incestuous. But whatever you call her, the filly is living proof that you can breed really close and come out with a winner, at least some of the time.

But there’s another interesting thing about Predict The Future’s pedigree. Her third dam is a New Zealand mare Just A Glow, who set a record here of p, 2:00 2/5 f and earned $ 45,285. She is from Fallacy, a son of Light Brigade, who was from Volomite.

New Zealand has traditionally been the breeding ground for Down Under which supplied Australia with their racing stock. New Zealand is a small country, in terms of people, and on one of my two visits eons ago it was described to me by a native as a country of two million people. and 70 million sheep. I’m sure the population, from a people’s perspective, has increased, but I’m not so sure about the sheep.

The foundation of the breeding industry in New Zealand were two great American stallions, Light Brigade and U. Scott. They were both long-lived stallions, and they were both preponderant, that is, a genetic lineup, in terms of playing cards, that contained only high cards.

Despite its small size, both in terms of population and horses, New Zealand’s breeding industry, if you can call it that, still produced the Great Cardigan Bay. I still have vivid memories of Cardy’s first three races here. Stanley Dancer had gone to Australia and bought it for $ 100,000 for Irving Berkemeyer, an undertaker by day, who took half, and several other customers who teamed up to take the other half.

I knew Berkemeyer, to the point that you could say he knew someone who spoke little and never smiled. Every time Cardy ran, MB would send someone to the mail-hour betting windows to put $ 10,000 up for grabs. After the race, the same courier would come back to the table with Mr. B’s winnings, then he would get a doggy bag for what was left of their meals, and they would silently leave New Jersey overnight.

As for the first three American races that distracted me with other things, Cardigan Bay and Overtrick faced off three weeks in a row at Yonkers, and they literally faced each other every step of the way. If memory serves, Overtrick won two and Cardy won one, but there wasn’t that much of a total difference between them for the three races.

A look back at the mare Just A Glow, the third dam of Predict The Future, our last inbred Stakes winner. Just A Glow is also the fourth dam to Charlie May, who is heading to the Breeders Crown Finals as one of the favorites in the three-year-old pacing colt race.

Mentioning West Hanover brings back a memory from a long time ago. When I first walked in, one of the first people I met was Max Hochberg. He was basically a gamer, but somehow he first became a racehorse owner and then a breeder.

Johnny Simpson was operating a public stable at the time, and when Hochberg proposed a playmaker named Torrid, he took him away from one of the first successful coaches, Hilda Heydt, and gave him to Simpson.

Torrid has enjoyed an unbeaten streak of something like 11 straight free games, giving Hochberg a nice little nest egg to work with. By that time, Hochberg had bought Torresdale, Torrid’s mother, and when he brought her back to Knight Dream, he got a world drummer named, of all things, Torpid.

Torpid won everything at 2 and 3, including the Little Brown Jug, then Hochberg entered into a rental agreement to place him at Hanover Shoe Farms. There the horse had all the chances, but failed to become a father. In fact, his less famous older brother Torrid turned out to be a better dad, but still didn’t succeed.

The reason Western Hanover is reminiscent of Max Hochberg is Western Hanover’s fourth dam, Wayblaze. The last Standardbred Max owned was Wayblaze, which he bought back at the Northfield Sale for $ 1,800. She was from King’s Counsel, Goldie Patch, Peter Nutonia. She only had a record of 2: 08.4, with no winnings, but her dam, Goldie Patch, had a record 3 of 2: 00.1 / 2, with $ 4,000 in winnings. She was a 1938 colt, so her record and money were significant in her time.

Hochberg saw something in Wayblaze that I didn’t know about, but Johnny Simpson and Lawrence Sheppard respected Hochberg’s judgment enough to buy Wayblaze when Hochberg sold to Harrisburg in 1972. started with Wayblaze, and his great-granddaughter is came with Western Hanover.

Here, as an aside, re: Hochberg and the Northfield sales, which Hochberg and I both witnessed as a religious observance. One afternoon, a day before the sale began, on a date now lost in time, Hochberg and I were going to lunch in his car. He stopped at a small burger stand, where we each bought a burger for 25 cents.

“Look at this,” Hochberg said. “The burgers are already prepared and they just reheat them when a customer shows up. And each of them is the same. One day, these places will be everywhere.

Enter McDonald’s, Wendy’s et al. left of the stage. How prescient Hochberg was, both on the horses and the burgers.