BEAT THE WHEEL--A FAST MARE FROM A TOP LINEAGE

Last fall at Harrisburg, the Valley Victory colt from the world champion trotting mare Beat The Wheel was sold to Bob McIntosh, as agent for one of his principal clients, Ohio's CSX Stables. The selling price of $400,000 topped the annual Harrisburg auction and was the highest price achieved at any of the major sales. It was also the second-highest price ever paid for a son or daughter of Valley Victory.

The colt, named Berndt Hanover, was bred by Hanover Shoe Farms, and sold in the “Diamond Session” on the opening night of the big Harrisburg sales. There was a great deal of interest in the colt, and rightly so. His sire, Valley Victory, continues to populate the trotting world with a seemingly endless array of champions. In each of his seven crops of racing age, Valley Victory has shown an astonishing gift for producing quality. His first crop included Hambletonian winner Victory Dream and Kentucky Futurity champion Bullville Victory. The second crop gave us Donerail, his fastest two-year-old son to date, as well as the filly stars Lookout Victory and Lifelong Victory. The third crop, possibly his best to date, included Continentalvictory, Lindy Lane, Act Of Grace, Mr Vic, and Dancer’s Victory.

Then came Yankee Glide from the 1994 crop, while Muscles Yankee starred from the 1995 foals. His 1996 crop has only completed their two-year-old season, but included the Breeders Crown champion filly, Musical Victory, the Goldsmith Maid winner Rum Boogie, and San Pellegrino, second in the world record Breeders Crown final. Valley Victory was ripe to sell a high-priced colt, and Berndt Hanover was the colt where the serious buyers zeroed their attention.

PART OF THE REASON FOR THE INTEREST WAS HIS DAM

Berndt Hanover, named for driving star Berndt Lindstedt, is the first foal of the world’s fastest racing trotter, the Defiant Yankee mare Beat The Wheel 2,2:03 2-5f; 3,1:58 3-5f; 4, 1:51 4-5. On paper, the union of Valley Victory and Beat The Wheel is enough to set the head spinning with confident expectation. Valley Victory has already produced the two fastest horses in Hambletonian history (Continentalvictory at 1:52 1-5 and Muscles Yankee at 1:52 2-5.) His daughter, Act Of Grace, is the second fastest 3-year-old filly of all time at 1:52 3-5. His son, Lindy Lane, is one of the five fastest 3-year-old colts of all time at 1:53. Well, you get the idea.

To join the fastest racing trotter of all time with a sire that has proven to have the ability to sire some of the quickest trotters in history seems like a formula for a trotting wonder horse. Whether this particular mating will prove out remains to be seen, but the early training reports from Bob McIntosh’s winter enclave in Ontario are that Berndt Hanover is, indeed, a very talented colt trotter.

Beat The Wheel took her stunning record of 1:51 4-5 in a non-betting, free-for-all trotting event at The Meadowlands early in 1994 as a 4-year-old. Driven by Meadowlands regular Catello Manzi, Beat The Wheel enjoyed a perfect, pocket trip behind the front-running Pine Chip through three-quarters of a mile in 1:24, before she rocketed past Pine Chip in the final sixteenth of a mile for her startling, record triumph. Beat The Wheel's 1:51 4-5 record is, of course, the fastest effort ever by an aged trotting female, with CR Kay Suzie second at 4,1:52 3-5. Armbro Mascara is next at 1:53. A trio of 3-year-old stars, Continentalvictory at 3,1:52 1-5; Act Of Grace at 3, 1:52 3-5 and Peace Corps at 3,1:52 4-5 are the only 3yos close to Beat The Wheel.

BEAT THE WHEEL WAS A FAST MARE WHO WAS SIMPLY IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME

Her shiny record notwithstanding, few observers would place Beat The Wheel among the best trotting mares of all time. She won 19 races in her career and earned a little over $300,000, but had she not defeated Pine Chip in the world record mile, she would have been seen in a much less luminous light. The balance of her racing career does not offer the same, exciting brand of perfection.

A daughter of the Speedy Crown stallion Defiant Yankee (a full brother to the dam of 1998 star Muscles Yankee) Beat The Wheel did not have many impressive stakes victories on her career slate. She won divisions of the Tompkins-Geers and PaSS at two; and followed up with a trio of sires stakes victories in Pennsylvania at three. At four, the same season in which she took her record, she also won an American-National Maturity elimination, won an invitational at Pompano Park in 1:55 2-5f, and defeated SJ’s Photo in a Meadowlands FFA. She certainly had her moments, but her entire career does not offer sustained quality at the highest levels.

Beat The Wheel raced in Ohio and Pennsylvania at two and three, but near the conclusion of her three-year-old season, she caught the eye of veteran trotting trainer Ronnie Gurfein while she competed at Pompano Park. Gurfein liked what he saw, and tried to buy the mare privately for a reported six-figure sum. The purchase offer was declined, but the mare showed up later that same year at the Harrisburg mixed sale, where Gurfein was the successful buyer for $97,000.

BEAT THE WHEEL NEEDED TO BE RE-PROGRAMMED

Shipped to Gurfein’s Florida training center, Beat The Wheel went through the Gurfein school of re-programming. There is perhaps no trotting trainer in North America who is better than Gurfein at instinctively knowing what to do with a gifted horse that has problems. Beat The Wheel, while racing at two and three in the Midwest, was primarily raced from behind, and showed absolutely no inclination to be able to leave the gate fast. She did, however, show a stunning brush, and her innate ability was what attracted Gurfein.

Gurfein set out to re-make the mare. He removed her heavy shoes and trained her bare-footed for the first few weeks of training. The mare had raced with a lot of weight at two and three, but Gurfein wanted to give her the confidence she needed to compete at a higher level without the 16-17 ounce shoes she had raced with at two and three.

“The mare’s action was perfect. She was very mechanically sound,” Gurfein said recently. “She put her feet in the right place with no wasted motion. Next to Continentalvictory, she was the best-gaited mare I ever trained.”

As it has on so many other occasions, Gurfein worked his magic on the mare. “I knew from watching her race at three that she had a lot of speed. She also had the size and dimension to go on and develop into a good, aged mare. All I really did with her was give her the tools she needed to learn to go fast,” Gurfein added.

Beat The Wheel qualified the following spring in 1:57f at Pompano Park, which was faster than her race mark at three of 1:58 3-5f. “I knew then that she was going to have a pretty good season,” Gurfein said. “She was never really a high class mare in the sense that she was not as game, nor as tough, as many of the other outstanding horses of her generation. What she had was incredible speed. She could just fly, and I was not at all surprised the night she followed Pine Chip in that world record mile,” Gurfein noted. “She didn’t really like to follow a horse, but Pine Chip went enough that night on the front-end that she got one of the best trips of her life and wound up with a great record.”

Gurfein also offered this historic tidbit from Beat The Wheel’s 1:51 4-5 mile. “The mare actually lost a shoe in the first turn of that mile. She trotted the final three-quarters of a mile, including a :27 second final quarter, on just three shoes,” he said.

BEAT THE WHEEL’S PEDIGREE HAS ALWAYS INTRIGUED US

By Defiant Yankee, a little-known son of Speedy Crown, Beat The Wheel’s dam is the non-record Lindy’s Crown mare, Beat The Band. Beat The Wheel, her second foal, was bred by Ann Beissinger, wife of noted trainer/driver Howard Beissinger, who developed such major trotting stars as Speedy Crown, Speedy Somolli and Lindy’s Pride, among many others. The third dam is the Speedy Scot mare Liveliness, and the fourth dam is the Star’s Pride mare Hassie Hanover.

All of this appears to be innocent enough until we put this pedigree on paper. Remember that Beat The Wheel is by Defiant Yankee, a son of Speedy Crown. Lindy’s Crown, the sire of Beat The Wheel’s dam, is a son of Lindy’s Pride whose own dam is a full sister to Speedy Crown, giving the world champion mare a close-up, cross to the full siblings Speedy Crown and Speedy Toe. If this were the end of that matter, it would still be interesting. However, consider also that there is a 3 x 4 x 3 generation cross to Speedy Scot, and that Beat The Band is also inbred 3x 3 to Star’s Pride.

Another interesting aspect to this pedigree when you consider the inherent speed it produced, is the common crosses to many noted producing mares. While we most often look at inbred and linebred crosses to sires that recur in a pedigree, Beat The Wheel’s pedigree features crosses to many well-known males and their female siblings. She is 3 x 4 to Missile Toe (dam of Speedy Crown and Speedy Toe); she is 6 x 5 to Fionne; 6 x 6 x 6 to Earl’s Princess Martha and 6 x 6 to May Spencer. There are, then, four prominent brother-sister combinations featured in this pedigree.

In considering the future of Berndt Hanover, it should be noted that Valley Victory has done very well with Speedy Crown line females—it is simply his best cross. Muscles Yankee, Donerail, Lindy Lane, Victory Dream, Bullville Victory, etc. all have Speedy Crown dams. This has always been so interesting because Valley Victory is himself descended from the Speedy Crown male line, since his sire, Baltic Speed is a son of Speedy Somolli, one of Speedy Crown’s Hambletonian-winning sons.

There is, in Berndt Hanover, a concentration of Speedster-line blood that matches much of the new with what we already know to be one of the sport’s most productive female bloodlines.

BEAT THE WHEEL HAS AN OUTSTANDING MATERNAL PEDIGREE

While Beat The Wheel’s maternal pedigree does not look that stately on paper, she does hail from one of the strongest trotting families in The Register. Many of our best families have both strong trotting and pacing branches. There are really no high-profile pacers in the Maggie H. maternal family from which Beat The Wheel emerged. This sets the Maggie H. family apart in our major breeding dynasties as one of trotting's strongest outposts.

The Maggie H. family has two main tributaries. The first descends from a granddaughter of the foundation mare, the Peter The Great mare, Sienna, a foal of 1909. Sienna’s dramatic impact can best be summarized by noting that her family produced females that ultimately yielded such trotters as Breeders Crown champions Armbro Keepsake, Me Maggie and Firm Tribute; world champion Worldly Woman; the top Midwestern US sire Speed In Action; Imperfection; Rosemary and her son, Royal Prestige; Nearly Perfect, Donerail, King Conch, Viking Kronos and Running Sea. In addition, Sienna’s half-sister is the grandam of world champion Mr. McElwyn and her daughter is the dam of Calumet Chuck. The biggest portion of Sienna’s contributions settled in the family emanating from the Belwin mare Kashmir, a foal of 1924 and a daughter of Sienna. Kashmir’s daughter, Kashmary, gave us the family that produced nearly all of this family’s top performers through her daughters Eleda, Miss Electra and Kashaplenty. A somewhat remote branch of this lineage is home to the Hambletonian Oaks winner Conch, and her brilliant sons, King Conch and Viking Kronos. Conch’s fourth dam is Kashmir. Yet another branch of the lineage produced the outstanding Supergill trotter, Running Sea, whose fifth dam, Anticipation, is a full sister to Kashmir.

A second branch of this historic family traces from Maggie H.’s daughter, The Gaiety Girl, which produced the 1920’s world champion trotting stallion, Lee Axworthy T1:58 1-4. It also led to the mare Princess Gay, whose daughters Fionne, Fiesta and Gay Sonata founded successful branches of the main family tree. The Fionne group is the largest and this is where we find Beat The Wheel and such other noted stars as Nuclear Kosmos, Crowning Point, Armbro Blush and Sierra Kosmos. To illustrate our point, we can see that the fourth dam of Crowning Point, the Volomite mare, Neon, is a half-sister to Highland Lassie, the fourth dam of Beat The Wheel. Fionne, the sixth dam of Beat The Wheel, is also a half-sister to the sixth dam of Sierra Kosmos. Even when a pedigree appears a little dull at first examination, this is what one often encounters when a high-achieving female is examined. There is ample evidence to believe that Beat The Wheel could have an exciting broodmare career. She certainly has the family to become a top producing mare.

Following her racing days, Beat The Wheel again returned to the Harrisburg sale, and this time the successful bidder, at $250,000, was Hanover Shoe Farms. It turns out that Hanover had been the underbidder on the mare when she sold at the end of her 3-year-old season. Had Hanover succeeded in buying Beat The Wheel at that time, she would never have raced beyond her 3-year-old form, and the history books would never have seen her world record performance. Such are the twists and turns of history.

Since Hanover Shoe Farms has already recouped their entire investment in the world champion mare a couple of times over with her very first foal, the rest of her production is gravy to the world’s leading breeding establishment. It will be fascinating to see if her own extraordinary ability transfers to Berndt Hanover, and her subsequent foals.