With his much-ballyhooed stablemate retired, 2019 Breeders Crown winner Gimpanzee is preparing for what could be a four-year-old campaign with international aspirations.

Earlier this year, Gimpanzee's trainer Marcus Melander tweeted a video of the horse in training accompanied by "#2020 #elitloppet." The video begged the question if Gimpanzee was in fact being pointed for the Elitlopp, and Melander answered the question in the affirmative.

"Obviously there's a lot of stuff we'd have to plan, with the flight and everything like that. But I don't think he'd have any problem racing against aged horses at the end of May," Melander told Trot Insider. "I think if we can work out a good trip for him to Sweden we'd be very excited to go over there."

Gimpanzee (Chapter Seven - Steamy Windows) was a key player in the 2019 season that propelled Melander to Trainer of the Year honours in the U.S., an award he'll receive on February 23 at the U.S. Harness Writers Association’s Dan Patch Award banquet in Orlando, Florida. Gimpanzee's $1.2 million sophomore season ranked only second to stablemate Greenshoe ($1.3 million) among trotters in 2019, and third best among all horses behind Bettors Wish ($1.75 million) and Greenshoe. Both Bettors Wish and Greenshoe were named Dan Patch Award divisional winners, with both in contention for Horse of the Year honours.

Of course, that was then and this is now. And the now is most important when discussing the possibility of Gimpanzee racing overseas in just over three months time.

"First of all, he'd need to qualify and all of that and then we'll see how he does," said Melander. "We still have a really good program here with the Graduate and all of that, and if we go to Sweden for the Elitlopp, we're just going for that race and then he's coming back here to race here all year."

Melander noted that the lack of a direct flight from the U.S. to Sweden makes the trip more cumbersome and taxing on the horse, and less attractive to the connections -- Courant AB and SRF Stable. As of now, there's a flight available from the U.S. to Belgium, but there's no word on how a horse would then get to Sweden from there. By car, that's a 17-hour drive to Stockholm and two hours by plane.

If a horse can handle that kind of arduous trip, however, Melander feels it's Gimpanzee.

"He's the kind of horse that would handle it. He's very easy on himself, with travelling and all that...obviously it's a step up to travel over to Europe to race against the best ones over there.

"We'll see how he qualifies. We'll only go with him if he's good enough to win; we don't want to go there just to be in the race. We're going to prepare him for that at least, and then if it doesn't work out -- maybe he's not sharp enough at the beginning of the year -- we won't go but it's at least a race we have in mind, both me and the owners."

Winning is something that Gimpanzee has done since the moment he stepped onto the racetrack as a two-year-old. The Dan Patch Award winner in 2018 by virtue of his undefeated nine-race campaign, Gimpanzee compiled a 8-1-2 record in his sophomore season that included Grand Circuit wins in the Breeders Crown, Yonkers Trot and Matron. He also polished off his state-bred rivals in the Empire Breeders Classic and NYSS Final, and completed his season with a solid fourth-place finish to older rivals in the TVG Final at The Meadowlands.

"He is a good horse on a five-eighths, as it is in Sweden. Everyone that's seen him here on those halfs, he is a very fast horse on those size of tracks."

According to Melander, interest in Gimpanzee as a stallion prospect really picked up after the Breeders Crown at Woodbine Mohawk Park but there was already a plan in place by his owners to race in 2020.

"Especially after the Breeders Crown, a lot of people were asking about him...but both the owners agreed that we were going to race at least one season more. I think, in my opinion, we didn't overrace him -- he only had nine starts as a two-year-old and then as a three-year-old we raced him pretty easy until the Hambo. I think he's got more to give, and I'm very excited to bring him back.

"He was in the TVG late in the season, maybe a length behind and came home in :26.3. When he won the Yonkers Trot, he just cruised around there in :53, not many horses would have done that...his resume speaks for itself, he's a very good horse."

Melander estimated that Gimpanzee would likely qualify in the middle part of April, six weeks out from the 2020 Elitlopp.

"I'm very happy with how he looks so far. I've had good talks with the people at Solvalla in Sweden, they know we want to come and they want us to come. Hopefully it will happen, but the horse will decide that himself when we start to qualify him."