P L Jill Retired

While she may not have been a Grand Circuit superstar, P L Jill more than proved her mettle through a race career that spanned nearly six years. And after winning 33 times and banking nearly $700,000, P L Jill will now look to carry on her parents' legacies as she embarks on her second career — as a broodmare.

"(Trainer) Ben (Baillargeon) told me that she was angry and she didn't want to race," Norm Clements of P L Jill's owner and breeder, Prince Lee Acres, told Trot Insider after her last start. "So, it's time. It's like all of us. Life changes every day, and we have to adapt to what we feel is the right thing to do."

Knowing what P L Jill was capable of at her peak made her last few starts particularly hard to watch for Clements — and ultimately led to the decision to breed her to Muscle Mass:

"As I said to Greg Coleman, whose dad was with me with Cam Fella, I said, 'You know, Greg, we’ve had so much fun, but I was so sad last night watching her last race.’ She normally wouldn’t go onto the track with those $20,000-purse horses. I mean, she was so superior — she would’ve been 1-9; she was 1-9 two weeks ago. ... I mean, it’s disappointing — they couldn’t beat her when she was really good, but she’s tired. So we decided, me and my partners, that we’ll breed her."

Despite the pair of lacklustre starts in late March that prompted Clements and partners Jill Coleman and Alan Christensen to retire P L Jill from racing, the eight-year-old Kadabra-Fridays Gem mare enjoyed long-lasting success on the racetrack, hitting her peak stride in her six- and seven-year-old campaigns. She won nine times and took her mark of 1:51.4 in 2019, won nine more times in 2020, and eclipsed the $200,000 earnings mark both seasons — all while primarily knocking heads week in and week out with the top trotters on the Woodbine Entertainment circuit.

"We were thrilled to have Jill, and I think she made a lot of people happy because she never had a chance to run against the girls," Clements continued. "It was always against the boys. Most of the nights she won, it was against six or seven boys."

On so many occasions over the past few seasons, Campbellville's leading ladies of trotting — 2020 O'Brien Award finalists Hey Livvy and P L Jill — made easy work of male company. In fact, the two biggest wins of P L Jill's career were against mixed competition, as she captured the two most recent editions of the $75,000 Earl Rowe Memorial at Georgian Downs.

P L Jill's lucrative racing career shouldn't come as much surprise: her full brother, Its Payday Friday (also by Kadabra and out of Fridays Gem) has won 27 times and made over $330,000; and her half sister Oho Diamond (by Ken Warkentin) took a mark of 1:50.2 at The Meadowlands in 2017 — a world record at the time — and earned over $210,000 in her own right. While Fridays Gem passed last year, there is no doubting the quality of her offspring — as evident in the sustained success the aforementioned trio enjoyed.

"It’s been an exciting couple of years," Clements said of P L Jill's rise to greatness on the track, giving credit to Baillargeon, trainer Matt Dupuis and son Dan Clements for the success she was able to attain. The elder Clements is hopeful the next chapter of P L Jill's life can provide Prince Lee Acres with just as much enjoyment.