Abbey Road C Passes

Trot Insider has learned that double millionaire and multiple O'Brien Award finalist Abbey Road C has passed away at the age of 21.

A son of Incredible Abe - Jayport Whimsey, Abbey Road C was purchased as a yearling for $11,000 by owner George Charlton, who entrusted the training to Keith Jones. Jones conditioned the talented trotter throughout his career and drove him in all of 287 lifetime starts.

"We both liked him," Jones told Trot Insider of the decision to purchase Abbey Road C as a yearling. "We had about $10,000 to spend and he hit $10,000 and I thought we were going to lose him but we decided at the last second to bid the extra thousand and we ended up with him."

It was likely the best thousand dollars Charlton spent before his passing in 2007, as Abbey Road C would bank $2,043,632 before his retirement in early 2012. Jones quipped that the trotter likely made a million with and without trotting hopples, a tool that helped steady the spunky trotter throughout his early contests.

"He was erratic behind the gate at two, and I knew he could trot without the hopples but we added them. He was a different horse then, later on we took the hopples off."

With unparalleled "heart and determination" and gate speed the likes of which he hasn't encountered before or since, Jones was amazed at how Abbey Road C persevered through adversity to excel as a racehorse that took his lifetime mark of 1:52.4 as a four-year-old but equalled that mark as a nine-year-old in an Open Trot at Woodbine Racetrack.

"The night that he set the world record at Georgian, I almost scratched him. He had a bad quarter crack that hindered him his whole life, I warmed him up and he ran all over the track," admitted Jones. "I decided to race him, I thought he'd be alright. I eased him around the first turn, got to the front just past the quarter and it was all over, well in hand."

A 1:53.2 world record for older trotting geldings established in 2004, Abbey Road C still holds the Canadian record for a trotting gelding on a five-eighths mile track, the oldest standing trotting record over the one-mile distance.

Despite winning multiple stakes races, setting numerous track records around the province and still holding a Canadian record some 16 years later, Jones think his best race was one that he didn't win -- the 2003 Breeders Crown Open Trot at Woodbine Racetrack, where he finished third and earned the biggest payday ($129,729) of his illustrious career.

"He was locked in and loaded with trot. If he's have got out earlier I'm pretty sure he would have been second."

Since his retirement, Abbey Road C was a companion horse of 30-year-old Tawnee Herbert at the farm of John & Lori Curran in Coldwater, Ont. The cozy comforts of home suited Abbey Road C both during his racing career as he was never much for travel.

"He never liked being away from home...when he was away from home, his nerves set in."

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the connections of Abbey Road C.