CR Kay Suzie - Open Trot
bay mare, 4, by Royal Troubador
Owners
Carl & Rod Allen Stable
The mile oval at the Meadowlands Racetrack has been trotted over by some of the greatest standardbreds of the past decades. As home to the Hambletonian and millions of dollars in stakes races, Meadowlands patrons could be forgiven for being hard to be impress.
Still, the 11 trotters entered for the inaugural $500,000 Breeders Crown Trot were a conspicuous group. With combined earnings just shy of $10 million, the Open field included four former Breeders Crown champions, a Hambletonian victor and a foreign trotter who had captured the premier events of France and Sweden, the Prix d’Amerique and the Elitlopp. The Hambletonian Society, desirous of attracting the top trotters in the world to these shores to compete in the Breeders Crown, extended invitations to nominate to the winners of the aforementioned events as well as the Lotteria and the World Cup point leader. The initial foray became a huge success when Coktail Jet won two of the four European races and was owned by connections skilled in the Trans-Atlantic transition.
Daniel Wildenstein, a Parisian native, is one of the world’s most exclusive art dealers and a respected art historian. The Wildenstein family is also involved in international banking. Their stables have numbered as many as 500 thoroughbreds and 300 trotters, with farms in Europe, Scandinavia and the United States. The family has owned three Breeders’ Cup champions and were seeking a unique double with Coktail Jet, a six-yearold son of French stallion Quouky Williams and Armbro Glamour, an exported American daughter of Super Bowl.
Wildenstein has won the Arc de Triomphe three times, but called Coktail Jet’s win in the Prix D’Amerique his greatest thrill. He purchased 50% of Coktail Jet from Jean-Etienne Dubois, and before the Prix d’Amerique the stallion was syndicated for $3.2 million. Coktail Jet commenced to breed a full book of mares after his Prix d’Amerique win, but an easy victory in the Elitlopp convinced Wildenstein and 26-year-old trainer/driver Jean-Etienne Dubois to accept the challenge of racing in the Breeders Crown. Though he had won his last three starts, many felt it was a formidable task to ask a horse to race, breed 160 mares, travel overseas, endure quarantine and adapt to the one-mile all-out American style of racing.
Two other trotting stallions in the field also worked their racing careers around stud duty. 1993 Two-Year-Old Crown Trot champion Wesgate Crown and 1995 sophomore Crown champion Abundance bred 60 and 17 mares respectively. Wesgate Crown had also raced in France early in the year, and had shown form reminiscent of his championship season in his recent efforts. Abundance, from the rough and tumble Ducharme stable, had raced just seven times in 1996, and was facing a pack of trotters in peak form. Eager Seelster, the 1992 Crown freshman champ, frightened onlookers with a monstrous 1:53.2 effort on Hambletonian day, and was respected, especially from the rail position. Deliberate Speed, successfully raced by Norwegian Per Henriksen overseas, suffered from allergies, and his connections were hoping for an August night with some moisture to it to give their trotter some relief.
Tagliabue was the first Hambletonian winner to resume a racing career in the U.S. since Mack Lobell in 1988. Usually they are hustled immediately off to the stud barn, or in some cases race overseas. Despite two winning efforts in June, the son of Super Bowl had galloped in next two starts and was coming into the Breeders Crown from the qualifying races, certainly no trainers choice of an approach to an event of this magnitude. Still, driver John Campbell has been known to author a miracle or two, so Tagliabue was neither the shortest or longest price on the board, but comfortably in the middle.
Stalwarts Impeccable Image, Goodtimes, Golly Too, Oaklea Count were all Breeders Crown alumni and of enormous profit to their owners, racing year round and racking up purse money with commendable regularity. Oaklea Count’s world record 1:52.1 Nat Ray victory was overshadowed in the Hambletonian Day glory surrounding Continentalvictory. The father and son combination of Ron Waples pere et fils had won this event twice before -- with No Sex Please, the first Ontario-bred horse to earn $1 million.
The eagerly awaited return to the races of 1995 Horse of the Year CR Kay Suzie was pushed further back on the calendar as the balmy spring days lengthened to hot summer ones. In mid-July she qualified in 1:53.4, a blistering mile for a trotter who hadn’t raced since November of the previous year. But CR Kay Suzie is no ordinary horse, and her connections had grown used to extraordinary effort from her slender presence.
Trainer | Driver
Carl Allen | Rod Allen
CR Kay Suzie is named for Rod and Dawn Allen’s daughter Kaylie. Originally, the filly’s earnings were to be set aside for Kaylie’s college education. After those earnings passed the $1 million mark, Kaylie was teased about buying the college, the Florida State University in Tallahassee. A winner of seven of nine races as a two-year-old, resulting 1994 divisional champion CR Kay Suzie set world records on every size track and in each case, shattered not just the filly mark, but any two-year-old trotting mark. Her world record of 1:55.1 for a freshman still stands today.
So dominant was CR Kay Suzie at three that the Hambletonian was more or less conceded to the fleet filly before it was actually raced. When she stepped offstride in her elimination, the reaction was seismic. Though the Allen family has produced a heady roster of equine notables, it is for the grace and poise they displayed under the pressure of CR Kay Suzie’s sophomore campaign that the Allen family may well be remembered. The season was repaired almost immediately when she won the World Trotting Derby in record fashion. Horse of the Year honors were earned after the Allens supplemented CR Kay Suzie to the Breeders Crown Open Mare Trot at Delaware, which she won easily.
Now four, the scene was all too familiar as CR Kay Suzie, headstrong from the ease in which she could assume the lead, refused to give in to driver Rod Allen’s attempts to settle her down in the Nat Ray, the last hope for an appropriate prep race for the Breeders Crown. She broke stride behind the gate and all hope was lost. The only recourse left for Rod was to ship to Pocono Downs and qualify, then hope and pray the months of swimming and jogging had laid enough of a foundation to carry her through the Breeders Crown mile.
With a large contingent of foreign press drawn by CR Kay Suzie and Coktail Jet presence, tension grew as the evening wore on. Coktail Jet was made the favorite for an impressive set of performances on several continents. As the gate left, Allen eased CR Kay Suzie out safely and the crowd expelled a collective breath. At the quarter, Oaklea Count had the front but gave it up immediately when CR Kay Suzie appeared beside him.
Now in control of the lead, CR Kay Suzie set a fast pace of :56.2 to the half with a comfortable but not overwhelming margin on the remainder of the field. Dubois had sent Coktail Jet wide around the first turn and then settled toward the back of the pack waiting to see what would unfold. The outer tier of trotters did not advance on CR Kay Suzie, and DuBois soon found himself hopelessly out of contention, with far too much ground to make up.
Meanwhile, CR Kay Suzie continued to do the unthinkable, striding out by four lengths at the three-quarter pole and looking strong at the head of the stretch. Trotters trailed in her wake, although Jack Moiseyev had freed Deliberate Speed from behind cover and was making a decent attempt to lessen the distance between the front-runner and the wire.
CR Kay Suzie and Rod Allen maintained a healthy two-length margin as they crossed the wire, in a jaw-dropping 1:52.3 effort, a stakes record and the second fastest trotting mile ever recorded in her division. Allen’s quote was truly telling: “I was worried it might be asking too much,” he said, “but she always surprises and always impresses me.”
Coktail Jet could never engage the field, and DuBois bitterly blamed himself for exposing his trotter to a task beyond his immediate capability. Travel and quarantine time along with shorter distance of a mile did not sit well with the European trotter. Deliberate Speed trotted smartly for second and was retired soon after to stallion duties in New Jersey. Goodtimes finished third under an impressive steer from Ron Pierce.
Rod Allen took CR Kay Suzie to Italy in the fall of the year, as a part-ownership in her had been sold to an Italian concern. That foray was not successful, but on the strength of her singularly brilliant Crown performance CR Kay Suzie was again named divisional champion for the third straight year. Now a double Crown winner, CR Kay Suzie is also the progeny of 1989 freshman trot winner Royal Troubador.
Purse $500,000
The Meadowlands Racetrack, East Rutherford, NJ - August 9, 1996
Extras
| Speed Records |
