"It's overwhelming, we're very excited and it sort of caps off an excellent year we had this past year. We hope to do it again in the near future."
Seelster Farms of Lucan, Ont., was a clear-cut winner in the Armstrong Breeder of the Year voting at the 2018 O'Brien Awards. Seelster-bred horses earned in excess of $3.4 million in 2018, and included a number of high-profile stakes performers including O’Brien finalists Bronx Seelster and Nirvana Seelster and pacing filly Kendall Seelster. Each of those horses provided Seelster Farms with multiple highlights over the past season and helped propel Seelster to its third win in the breeder category.
"'Nirvana' is just an iron horse. He started right at the bottom and worked his way right to the top. To see the longevity of his career has been great," Seelster's Walter Parkinson told Trot Insider. "Bronx Seelster was a nice horse to watch in the Battle of Waterloo and his OSS Gold victories...Kendall Seelster was an exciting horse for us to watch this past year for three-year-old filly pacers and watching her come up into the aged mare ranks. Overall, it was excellent."
In 2018, Seelster Farms boasted a total of 123 starters that made more than 1,800 starts and won 281 races.
"We had a consistent year in the OSS, had some Grand Circuit luck as well, had a nice yearling sale again so overall I think it was a success from start to finish."
Parkinson also talks about the farm's new foal arrivals and first-year stallions in this interview recorded after the 2018 O'Brien Awards.
This is the fifth in a series of several post-event video interviews with O'Brien Award finalists, sponsored by Horse Racing Alberta.
On Saturday, Feb. 2, Standardbred Canada announced the winners for the 2018 O’Brien Awards at the 30th edition of the annual O’Brien Awards Black Tie Gala, held at the Hilton Mississauga / Meadowvale hotel in Mississauga, Ont. The O’Brien Awards honour Canada’s best in harness racing over the past season and are named in honour of the late Joe O’Brien, an outstanding horseman and member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. To view the full list of 2018 O'Brien Award winners, click here.