Northern Dancer Blog: July 2010

Thursday, July 8, 2010

It truly was a Queen's Plate

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.... with her majesty Queen Elizabeth II on hand to give away the winner's trophy to the connections of Big Red Mike. It was another 1-2-3 finish for descendants of Northern Dancer - more specifically Vice Regent with Big Red Mike, Hotep and Roan Irish finishing in that order.

Great Great Grandson X3 Drosselmeyer wins Belmont

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Sorry, I have been out of touch for a while. Drosselmeyer took this year's Belmont. His sire Distorted Humor is out of the Danzig mare Danzig's Beauty and his dam Golden Ballet was California horse-of-the-year in 2001 out of Nijinsky's son Moscow Ballet. There was also some Storm Bird blood on the dam's side. Second place finisher Fly Down and third place First Dude are not descendants of our Dancer.

Reason for the Blog

I thought it was time to extend the story I started in 2005. This will be a busy week in November 2009 for thoroughbred racing and something tells me my little hero will have played a significant role by the end of the week.

I wrote that on November 2, 2009 and I would say that the Dancer is still playing a significant role. I am trying to update the status of Northern Dancer's legacy using excerpts from my book which was completed in 2007 and published in 2008 along with today's thoroughbred racing news. If you are confused it may be because in addition to inserting the latest (2009) news I also decided to shift around my chapter flow from the original book which also featured many time shifted chapters to begin with. I am confusing myself just trying to describe it. Back to the future - it is Nov 12, 2009 for another 5 minutes.

Quotes describing Northern Dancer from the CBC Life and Times Biography

"They say the north wind was tangled in his mane"

"The pony from Canada"

"The little dancer"

"The little horse with a big heart"

"He gave you more resasons to love him"

"You can see the soul of an animal through his eye and Northern Dancer had a particularly deep eye, it was as if you could see forever in there"

"What he represented to us was the heroic"

"Little guy ... big heart, trying his best, never gave up ... it was heroic"

on his relationship with E.P. Taylor - "It was alchemy, they transformed each other"

"He became a Canadian hero"