b4breeding

Nedda Guy was one of Nedda’s five foals and by far the most significant. She inherited her mother’s speed and toughness – and her ability to win public admiration as well as races. She was the star of the 1931 trotting season until a career and life-threatening injury occured – but even that didn’t stop her.

Henry McLemore, writing a column in The Huntingon Daily News on August 18 1932 sums up her public affection nicely:

“The roar goes up when Nedda Guy won the first heat of the Shepherd Stake… “A game little filly,” someone explains. “She’d a won the Hambletonian last year but for injuries in the opening heat.”

There are several accounts of that 1931 Hambletonian, but The Milwaukee Journal of August 16, printed this report from Goshen, NY where the heats were held at W H Cane’s farm on a three-corned one-mile track:

“Nedda Guy, 3-year-old filly owned by W H Cane, which went lame during the running of the second heat of the Hambletonian Friday, probably never will start in another race. The little bay filly, which was pre-race favourite, is thought to have suffered a fractured pelvis bone during a warming up mile prior to the first heat….If Nedda Guy was injured before the start of the Hambletonian, her performance was remarkable. She finished fifth in the first heat and then staged a great stretch drive to land second place in the second heat back of Calumet Butler, which stepped the mile in 2.031/4.”

Nedda Guy was assisted off the track, but first had to be paraded in front of disbelieving favourite punters to show how lame she was.

The story has a happy ending, as reported in The Evening Independent the following year:

“When examination disclosed the fracture she was to suffer the usual fate of seriously injured racing horses, but Walter Cox gave her such excellent care that she is now in sound condition and an outstanding contender for honors in the four-year-old division.”

It’s as a broodmare that Nedda Guy is now remembered – one of her five foals was On Time (by Volomite) born in 1938 who was developed as a pacer. She went on to be the dam of fantastic race horse, sire and damsire Good Time, and thus appears in the pedigree of many top racehorses of both sexes and in many leading sires and broodmares. On Time produced not only Good Time, but a younger full sister Our Time who set a world record for 2yo fillies in 1948 and won over $50,000 that year. Our Time was ranked by Frank Irvin alongside Adios, Bret Hanover, Good Time and Good Counsel as the five best horses he had trained, and she pops up in some pedigrees as grandam of Whata Baron (himself a world champion racehorse).

Another of Nedda Guy’s daughters, Olympia (by Volomite), led to a less illustrious line but one that finishes with a flourish – as the bottom line of Big Towner’s pedigree – notice my old favourite Shadow Wave as the damsire, adding his contribution! Big Towner was a horse with tremendous speed who hardly ever raced on the big tracks where he could use it to full advantage.

Yet another of Nedda Guy’s foals by Volomite was Mighty Ned, born 1942, who appears to have been exported to Italy as a trotter where he won the Prix d’Amerique at 6 and 9 years old and was also second in that race at 7 years old (before having a career at stud).

At its best, this  line appears to really stamp progeny – small in stature (Nedda the “little mare”, Nedda Guy the “game little filly”, Good Time who notoriously started racing at 13.1 hands and ended it as a 14 hand sire) but with a big motor (heart), real speed and excellent gait. As a sire, Good Time often passed on those attributes, and the big heart (through his x line to his female foals) has helped him be such a positive factor in many modern bloodlines.

John Bradley’s book Modern Pacing Sire Lines has an excellent chapter on Good Time

Where did that big heart come from?

This is where Volomite comes in.

And Atlantic Express.

That’s what I’ll look at in the next blog – which is also about a thoroughbred mare called Esther.