As 2011 came to a close, seven-year-old trotting phenomenon San Pail validated his position as the current heavyweight champion of the trotting game with a gutsy victory in the $602,340 Breeders Crown Open Trot, besting European invaders Rapide Lebel and Commander Crowe with conviction. There is no denying that San Pail is a great horse. But... and it may be too soon to know... can he become the greatest trotter ever?

By Keith McCalmont

With the much anticipated O’Brien Awards just around the corner, the Glenn Van Camp/Rod Hughes owned gelding San Pail will undoubtedly be named Horse of the Year on the back of a slew of impressive victories – in the $730,000 Maple Leaf Trot at Mohawk, the $602,340 Breeders Crown, the $300,000 Nat Ray Invitational at the Meadowlands, the $218,000 Credit Winner at Vernon Downs and the $145,000 Allerage Farms Trot at The Red Mile. With 14 wins from 16 starts in 2011, San Pail is the No. 1-ranked horse in North America in the weekly Hambletonian Society/Breeders Crown Top 10 poll.

There is no denying that San Pail is an incredibly talented trotter, and the buzz he generates among fans and horsemen alike is contagious. But... and it may be to soon to know... is he the greatest ever? If not today, could he become it?

The Rod Hughes trained fellow recently finished second (with 543 votes - 14%) in a poll we conducted on the Standardbred Canada website, which asked readers to choose the greatest of trotter of all time; we listed 24 trotting greats, and his support was enough to slot him just behind the multi-millionaire mare Moni Maker, who garned 783 votes (20%).

Hughes is proud his horse finished so high in the poll – one which sparked much debate in the racing community. “I think he deserves to be among the greats,” says the trainer. “I’m not sure if he deserves to be one-two. It sure is nice to be thought of that way, but those were all great horses in their day.”

In fact, Hughes admits that even he might have voted for another trotter. “I was always a big fan of Mack Lobell,” he grins.

Mack Lobell, who won Horse of the Year in 1987 and 1988, and banked $3,917,594 in a storied career that included victories in the Yonkers Trot, Hambletonian, Elitlopp (twice), and Breeders Crown wins as a three and four-year-old, garnered 376 votes (10%) in the SC poll.
Hughes can only shake his head at the thought of his horse being listed in company with Moni Maker and Mack Lobell.

“It was just how tough they were,” he admits. “They went all over, they travelled and they raced for quite a few years and they stayed at the top of their game... just like Pail is right now.”

DEFINING GREATNESS

Part of the conundrum in answering the question is identifying the criteria of greatness. Is it most races won? Is it the fastest time? And how do you compare horses of the modern era that dine on high-performance food, race on banked tracks designed for speed and have the benefit of the latest supplements to horses from past decades that had to slog their way over muddy sand rings, pulling a heavy driver on a heavier bike?

Well known racing historian Dean Hoffman believes that greatness is defined by a sustained period of excellence. “It’s consistency over several seasons,” offers Hoffman, without hesitation. “It’s the ability to beat the very best as a young horse and again as an older horse. I like to see a horse demonstrate ability over various size tracks, but today so few trotters race often on half-mile tracks. And ideally I’d like to see a horse excel at various distances.”

By Hoffman’s definition, San Pail’s claim for greatness breaks at the gate. Before his five-year-old campaign, San Pail could best be described as a good young horse. He went unraced as a two-year old and, with ten wins from 52 starts at age three and four, secured his best paycheque ($36,000) with a third place finish in the OSS Super Final for three-year-old colts and geldings behind Arch Madness and Laddie.

Hughes, who picked up San Pail halfway through his two-year-old year, can only shrug his shoulders.

“He just had to be waited on,” says Hughes. “There was nothing physically wrong with the horse. He just needed more time. That was it. It was just a matter of who was willing to put the time in.”

In fact, had Hughes not stepped in, San Pail wouldn’t be a part of this list.

“He was going to the Mennonites and, to be honest, I didn’t have a lot of stock in my barn and I thought any opportunity to take on a young horse would be good for me,” he says. “I was hoping for something to get going with and maybe have a grassroots sires stakes three-year-old. But he really took off after his three year old year.”

Perhaps, a better line of measuring greatness would be to examine trotting Horse of the Year winners such as Nevele Pride, Mack Lobell and Moni Maker.

“Nevele Pride was Horse of the Year each year he raced (age 2, 3, and 4) and set world records each year he raced,” points out Hoffman. “He retired as the fastest and richest trotter in history. Many of his races were on half-mile tracks and he was a superstar on any size track. He never had an easy race in his life as Stanley Dancer chased records with him. Nevele Pride took a licking and kept on ticking.”

Ron Waples, who sat behind a number of racing’s greatest trotters (including Sugarcane Hanover), Peace Corps and No Sex Please, is doubtful this discussion will bear fruit as it applies to picking a ‘greatest ever’ from more than a century of racing history.

“It’s like comparing apples and oranges,” says Waples. “A horse does something one year, but you have to wonder if in another year he’d have done the same thing. If you asked me who the best trotter is this year, it’s San Pail. There’s no question about it. But, Sugarcane Hanover was an unbelievable horse in his year. You go back to Nevele Pride, Une de Mai, I wouldn’t be able to pick the horse I thought was the best of all time.”

One thing Waples is certain of is what traits make for a good trotter. “Manners, to start with,” says Waples. “Then gait, speed and endurance. Those are the four components, I would say.”
The latter two traits have changed dramatically in the past few decades as speed records for all standardbreds have dropped substantially. It’s a notion not lost on veteran journalist Hans Grottke.

“I was there the day Mighty Dudley was the first to break the two minute mile in Canada at Richelieu Park in 1959,” recalls Grottke. “Today, you don’t get a race that goes over two minutes. We used to keep records of miracle miles of each year… and you’d have a handful of horses... but today there are thousands of them. Woodbine has ten two-minute miles a night! It’s impossible to compare the horses of the past with the present.”
And there are an awful lot of variables involved when it comes to dissecting this change in speed. Waples believes the advancement of the standardbred athlete starts from the moment of conception.

“The main thing I think has changed is the way a mare is looked after when she is carrying her foal. It starts right there,” says Waples. “Everything they need they get and that gives you a stronger, healthier foal. And the way foals are raised nowadays compared to 25 years ago...”
Not only are the foals given opportunity to reach their peak strength and conditioning from their very first steps, they’re also proving themselves in a better environment.

“The racetracks are better, and the equipment is better,” offers Waples. “The catch drive made a big difference on the speed of horses. And all the new treatments out now to keep a horse sound like shockwave and laser machines.... all that helps. It takes away the aches and pains they have. There’s no one thing that has changed.”

Grottke adds that there might even come a day when the standardbred will race on par with their thoroughbred counterparts.

“Now we have horses going under 1:50 and that number is only going to improve,” says Grottke. “I don’t know that we’ll ever reach the day where a standardbred will be able to match a thoroughbred over the mile, but they’ve certainly cut into the difference. Before it might have been 20 seconds, now we’re down to 10 seconds.”

Hughes has his own theory on why today’s horses are moving faster – and it stems from the rulebook moreso than racing surface.

“I think its pretty tough to compare because track surfaces change and even if you go back just a few years to the removing of the hub rail... That makes a huge difference on both the speed of the race and how the race went,” he says. “There are lots of horses that might have been getting a great trip and maybe the horse in front runs and has to go to the safety lane, where a few years ago they wouldn’t of had the opportunity for that horse to get out of the way and they’d have been taken out of the race.

“That hub rail has a lot to do with speed too. Horses never used to get down and crowded along the rail, they’d always stay out two to three feet off the rail. But now, guys aren’t afraid to get in there and bang off a few pylons.”

HUGHES ON GREATNESS

Strangely, Hughes believes that San Pail’s legacy might be held back simply because his name is listed in the conditioner’s column on the chart.

“A lot of people might discount Pail as far as being great because I have him,” he says. “I’m not a Jimmy Takter, I’m not a Chuck Sylvester. It just seems the noted trainers of these typical big horses year after year get a lot of notoriety.”

And yet, Hughes is almost certain the horse couldn’t have excelled in a larger barn.

“I do believe that in a bigger stable Pail would be no good at all,” he says. “He’s a small stable horse. He needs hands on attention every day – he’s not to be ignored. I think the day you slip up with him, the ride will be over.”

It is strange to look back at San Pail’s beginning racelines and see two years of results that do not live up to the gelding’s current lofty position. But for the patient Hughes, who was taking his time, and that of driver Randy Waples, to teach his pupil the game, those few first wins and cheques made all the difference.

“For me to have a $100,000 year was unbelievable,” recalls Hughes. “Even though he was making mistakes, we knew he was fast, and he still had to learn quite a bit. It took him a few years just to learn how to relax.”

There were flashes of greatness along the way. On June 26, 2007 San Pail zipped a rapid mile in 1:54.4 over Kawartha Downs five-eighths of a mile track. It was a fast time for a young horse still learning the game, but San Pail still hadn’t put it all together, just yet.

In Hughes’ mind, the light didn’t come on for San Pail until July of 2009 at Mohawk Racetrack – San Pail’s first crack at the Maple Leaf Trot.

“After warming him up that night I said to my wife and my dad, ‘tonight is his night, he’s going to win this,’” recalls Hughes. “And I felt a bit silly saying it but he just had that feel when he warmed up that it was his night. He was just full of himself.”

With three years of racing under his belt, the horse had surely been taught as much as she could be about how to race. But there was one thing missing from San Pail’s game – confidence.

“I believe it all comes down to that first Maple Leaf Trot he won and he battled Arch Madness all the way through the stretch,” posits Hughes. “I think after that race, either his confidence level shot through the roof, or he found himself that day. Who knows? If he gets beat half a head it could all be different. But he battled that horse all through the stretch and everything turned out great.”

The difference in San Pail’s form following his first Maple Leaf Trot score is night and day. Suddenly the racelines appear to be written in binary – the winner’s column is full of ‘1’s and there were more ‘0’s after the prize money than ever before.

In 17 races leading up the 2010 Maple Leaf Trot final, San Pail would win ten times. The public, however, still did not believe in San Pail. Despite winning his elimination with ease, San Pail was made third choice in the final behind the Lucky Jim and Enough Talk.

What the public thought didn’t matter. San Pail broke sharply for his constant partner Waples, made the lead, and never looked back, defeating Reven Damour by three lengths and taking a new mark, at that time, of 1:51.3.

Winning a second Maple Leaf Trot instilled more confidence in San Pail as the gelding added even more 1s and 0s to his racelines. He’s been defeated just twice in 21 starts since, and for Hughes, this dominance was always within the horse’s capabilities.

“I’ve always thought the great horses have stamina and a great gait and Pail has both,” says Hughes. “He’s so versatile, or has gotten to be over the last year and a half. He’s not one dimensional. He doesn’t have to race on the front end or dead set off the back. Randy’s done such a great job of teaching him over the years and he has determination. He does not want to get beat and I don’t think you can teach that.”

Is all this success a result of confidence? Is it maturity? Perhaps it’s all much simpler than that.

“Heart is heart,” suggests Hughes. “It’s what you can’t see.”

LONGEVITY AND OTHER HORSES

Bill O’Donnell, a racing great in his own right, has a hard time settling on even a handful of horses when it comes to naming the game’s greatest trotter.

“Two names that come to mind quickly are Moni Maker and Ourasi, who we never saw much of over in this part of the world,” states O’Donnell. “Ourasi was here just once and ran a tremendous race in the March of Dimes Trot. He dominated Europe for years and years and he was eight years old when he finally came over here.”

O’Donnell, interest piqued, rattles off the names of past legends at great pace.

“Moni Maker was an okay two-year-old and as a three-year-old raced against her own kind most of the time,” recalls O’Donnell. “But as an aged mare she went on to beat everybody, especially in our part of the world. Another is Peace Corps; what she did in her lifetime was probably as impressive as anyone. I think she retired with the most money of any horse, and she won the Merrie Annabelle as a two year old, which was the biggest race at the time for a two year old.”

In the midst of discussing two mares, Moni Maker and Peace Corps, who both raced against the boys and won, O’Donnell recalls a forgotten favourite he had the pleasure to drive – Valley Victory.

“Valley Victory would have been great if he had lasted long enough,” offers O’Donnell. “He won his last eight races in a row. He won the Yonkers Trot and set a track record, but he only raced seven times as a three-year-old and he won his last couple of starts. I think he could have set lots of records if he had stayed okay but they had to retire him.”

The abbreviated career of Valley Victory, who won 11 of 14 career starts, brings another interesting aspect to the table of determining greatness, namely, longevity. With O’Donnell’s stamp of approval, Valley Victory was a talented horse capable of beating the best of his era. Can we hold the horse in any less regard for not adding more to his stats?

There are numerous examples of athletes in other sports that demonstrated greatness, for a time, only to fade from the picture.

For example, in baseball, J.R. Richard, a pitcher for the Houston Astros, was part of a rotation that included the legendary Nolan Ryan. Between 1976 and 1980, the right-hander was one of the most feared pitchers in the majors, leading the National League twice in strikeouts, while winning at least 18 games each year. But tragedy struck on July 30, 1980, when Richard suffered a stroke and collapsed while warming up before an Astros game. Richard was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove a life-threatening blood clot in his neck. The surgery saved Richard’s life but his major league career was over at the age of 30.

Richard is merely one example of a player cut down in his prime. A severe hip injury ended the career of football and baseball star Bo Jackson at the age of 29; hockey star Derek Sanderson, an integral member of the Boston Bruins Stanley Cup winning squads in 1970 and 1972, saw his career shortened by alcohol and drug abuse.

There are myriad examples of flashes of greatness in sport, from winning streaks to fastest times, but for O’Donnell, a man who lasted the test of time himself, greatness comes with a benchmark.

“I think it has to be longevity,” says O’Donnell. “And with San Pail, you’re talking four years of this stuff. He ended up beating the best horses in the world in his last start.”

SPEED

In whittling down the list of trotting greats, one thing they all have in common is speed.
In 1987, Mack Lobell set a world record mile for trotters of 1:52.1.

At the age of four, Beat The Wheel became the World’s Fastest Trotter, taking a record of 1:51.4 in defeating Pine Chip among others.

Racing historian, and stats guru, Don Daniels opines that Dean Hanover, who in 1937, as a three-year-old set a world mark for a three-heat race of 2:00¼, 2:00¾, and 2:00¾, and was a champion at ages two through four, must be considered among the greats for a combination of his durability and speed.

As reference to Dean Hanover’s legend, Daniels provided the following quote from Charles “Doc” Tanner, from a 1937 article written by John Hervey.

“Here is a colt that begins as a two-year-old, you might say before he’s dry behind the ears. He has a whole bunch of different trainers and breaks records for each and all of them. He does so for both of his owners, one of them a man that, I hear, weighs 200 pounds. And then an eleven-year-old child gets up behind him and drives him in 1:58 1/2! What a brain, what a trotting brain, that colt has.”

That 11-year-old child was Alma Sheppard. Can you imagine a pre-teen guiding one of today’s Breeders Crown trotters to the gate?

And what do we make of Greyhound,? The outstanding grey trotter, nicknamed The Great Grey Ghost, won the Hambletonian in 1935, and at the age of six, lowered the record time for trotting the mile to 1:55¼ a record that stood until 1969.

Robert Smith, who has penned a plethora of SC Rewind pieces, is convinced that Greyhound (who was named the Horse of the Century by a panel of seven harness racing journalists in Lexington, Kentucky shortly after his death) deserves top billing.

“Just imagine,” says Smith in earnest. “Some 70-plus years after his racing career ended, Greyhound remains a part of the face of the harness racing world wide despite all of the changes during those years. Today, unlike the Greyhound era, horses are expected to race in a very aggressive fashion throughout their lifetime, always at or near their records. This did not happen years ago even though heat racing was in vogue. Greyhound in his day was a major part of the ‘face’ of the entire sport. He literally worked for ‘nothing’ in an era when there was just no purse money to be won.”

Is Greyhound’s personal best, lasting as long as it did (31 years, 1:55.1 at the Red Mile) perhaps proof that the silver-skinned flyer is is the greatest? Nowadays records fall in a matter of months.

Hughes, whose San Pail has a personal best of 1:50.4, tips his own cap to Greyhound.

“Records seem to come and go so fast now,” offers Hughes. “Maybe 1:55 would be a good mile now if we all had to go back and race over those tracks Greyhound had to race over.”

There is really no answering the question of who is the greatest trotter of all time.
Hughes seems content to stand at the peak today with San Pail wearing the championship belt, though he admits that his European competition from the Breeders Crown is keen to go another round.

“They called me on Sunday and wanted to put together a match race between Rapide Lebel, Ready Cash and Pail,” says Hughes. “They wanted to put up a million Euro in March for him to go and I told them we won’t go. It’s more about the horse to me than the money or the prestige or the award. In my mind, I’ve got a good horse. It’s what I’ve always wished for. I don’t want to jeopardize what I have going.”

Hughes is fully aware that no matter what schedule he plans for San Pail, there will always be complaints.

“Look at the year he had,” says Hughes. “Even if he came back and had half of that year, it would be great.”

It’s possible that the defeated connections may never get over the November night at Woodbine when San Pail, urged to the lead on the first turn forcing Rapide Lebel wide, surged home down the lane a champion.

“The move on the turn was the winning move,” recalls Hughes. “You knew it was either the winning move or the losing move. I was standing with my wife and dad and I said we either won or lost right there. But I thought it was the right move to make but you don’t know how it’d play out later in the mile.”

But Hughes isn’t buying the excuse that Waples’ move was unfair or cost the European horse the race.

“Everyone says the European horses were tough and they were,” starts Hughes. “But I think if he [Waples] sits back with them, he would have a huge kick for home and he still probably would have beaten them. It would have been a very exciting stretch drive. We all see the race differently but I still think he comes out the winner if Randy has to sit back and come large at the end of it.”

Hughes was so confident in the greatness of San Pail that night, he didn’t even bother to watch the end of the race. “I walked away from the TV halfway down the stretch,” says Hughes. “I thought he wouldn’t let them by. I’ve seen them get to his bridle when he’s on his game and he’ll go with them.”

And when did he know his horse had won?

“When I could hear the crowd cheering in the grandstand because I’d walked outside of the paddock already,” he laughs.

Although San Pail will stay home and race a similar schedule next year as his phenomenal 2011 season, there is a chance the horse might add to his legend, and greatness, if he continues his run of good form.

“I told them that if he was still strong at nine, which gives us another year of racing at home, I would consider going over to the Elitlopp in Solvalla,” says Hughes. “If everything looked good and he was still strong and healthy, I would seriously consider it. That might be the way to bring it all to a close.”

Hughes, who might be the most underrated part of the entire San Pail story, is melancholy about the entire experience.

“I think back to my very first win with him – I think I won his second start with him, driving him myself at Woodbine,” he says. “There are three of us in the winner’s picture that night, and then you look at that last Breeders Crown picture and there’s 180 people standing there, it’s ridiculous. It’s been quite a ride.”