Trot Insider has learned that top class trotting mare and multiple O'Brien Award finalist HP Mama B has been retired from racing and will start her broodmare career.
A 24-time winner in her career, HP Mama B was developed by trainer and breeder Ben Baillargeon. After starting her career in the Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots program, the daughter of Royalty For Life - Winters Jewel progressively improved into a Grand Circuit stakes winner as a three-year-old before tussling with the top older trotting mares in North America for the last three seasons.
Sporting multiple wins at the Woodbine Mohawk Park Preferred level, HP Mama B retires with a 24-14-12 summary from 94 starts, a mark of 1:51.4 taken as a four-year-old and earnings of $867,467. She is both the richest and fastest offspring from her sire.
"This year started well," recounted Baillargeon. "She qualified back real well, came home in :26 in both of her qualifiers. Then she started racing, and everything went wrong, you know? Got interfered with a couple times and some bad trips. It wasn't her year.
"She's six years old now, and it's time to call it quits, not because she broke down or anything, but it looks to me like she's had enough racing. She wants to be a momma."
And so it begins for HP Mama B, but at the same time it might end for connections Guylaine Picard of Guelph, Ont. — Ben's wife — and Claude Hamel of Orford, Que.
"She's going to be a very nice mare either for me or for somebody else. We don't have to sell her, but if the right buyer comes around...If not, we're going to breed her ourselves."
Baillargeon fondly recalled a number of highlights from HP Mama B's career, where she garnered recognition as an O'Brien Award finalist in the Older Trotting Mare category both in 2022 and 2023.
"When she won the Casual Breeze, I was real happy," noted Baillargeon. "Actually, in the [2022] Breeders Crown, she didn't have her best week in the elimination and she came back, finished third to Jiggy Jog S and M Ms Dream. I was real happy with her, too.
"The moment she went in :55 as a three-year-old in the Gold at Grand River, parked to the half...there's more good moments than bad."
(Standardbred Canada)