Trot Insider has learned that Canadian record holder and multiple stakes and Open winner Linedrive Hanover has been retired.
A winner of more than $806,000 over his career, Linedrive Hanover (Betting Line - Lillian Hanover) was developed by his co-owner Casie Coleman before she and co-owners Kevin McKinlay, Jim Fielding and Mac Nichol placed the pacer in the care of Tony Beaton.
After missing the majority of his two- and three-year-old campaigns, Linedrive Hanover made a splash in his four-year-old year with a 10-race win streak to start 2022. His streak was snapped by 2021 Horse of the Year Desperate Man in an elimination of the Charles Jurvavinski Memorial Cup at Flamboro Downs, losing by a head. But Linedrive Hanover avenged that loss with a dazzling 1:49 Canadian record effort in the Juravinski final, defeating a field that included eventual Horse of the Year and Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Famer Bulldog Hanover.
Linedrive Hanover slugged it out against the best older pacers on the continent, taking his mark of 1:47 in a Free-For-All event last year on Canada Day at Woodbine Mohawk Park, a mile time that was just one-fifth of a second off the Canadian record on a seven-eighths mile oval.
His most recent stakes win was also his final appearance, a 1:47.2 score in this year's Mohawk Gold Cup.
"He was definitely one of the fastest and definitely toughest horses I ever had," said Coleman in a social media post on Saturday. "If this horse was sound, it is scary what we might have seen him do on the track."
Coleman indicated that Linedrive Hanover will enjoy his retirement years at Anvil and Lace Farm in Paris, Ky.
(Standardbred Canada)