Hall of Fame broodmare Flat Foot Fluzy passed Thursday (Jan. 4) in New Jersey, equine surgeon Dr. Patty Hogan, the wife of owner Ed Lohmeyer, said. Flat Foot Fluzy was 31.
Lohmeyer bred Flat Foot Fluzy, a daughter of Direct Scooter out of Quinella Blue Chip, with William Simon, who was Secretary of the Treasury during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Simon, who enjoyed success as a co-owner of Lohmeyer-trained multiple stakes winner Landslide, and Lohmeyer had bought Flat Foot Fluzy’s dam with the intentions of getting into the breeding business.
Flat Foot Fluzy’s career on the racetrack was cut short by injury as a two-year-old, but she made her mark as a broodmare. Her first foal, a son of Albert Albert named Pacific Rocket, was a Dan Patch Award winner who earned $2.33 million lifetime.
Overall, Flat Foot Fluzy was the dam of 12 horses, of which five earned six figures. Those horses included Pacific Titan, who won 32 races and $800,072, and Pacific Missile, who won 32 races and $378,797.
Flat Foot Fluzy was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2002.
“She was nasty,” Lohmeyer said about Flat Foot Fluzy in the 2014 book Standardbred Old Friends. “She’d put her ears down the back of her neck, wanted to bite, she wanted her own space. I don’t think she liked anybody. But oh boy, was she a great-gaited filly. She had an effortless, long gait that covered a lot of ground.
“She’s a big part of my life. She’s been around a long time and was the start of my being able to breed some nice horses.”
In recent years, Flat Foot Fluzy’s favorite companion was Keystone Wallis, the grandam of Always A Virgin. The two shared a paddock for eight years until Keystone Wallis’s passing seven months ago, June 4, 2017.
This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.