The hopeless mare
by Lisa Harkema
She had a questionable pedigree, was difficult to handle, didn’t trot well and didn’t even start a single race. However suspect and hopeless the mare and her background appeared, Santos produced two of the best horses of her day and was a remarkable broodmare.
Peter V Johnston, who trained Santos’ son Peter the Great, also knew the mare really well. “In the winter and spring of 1890-91 Johnston used her for a driving horse and found her ‘bad tempered, bad gaited and with no speed’.” Indeed, Santos never made it to any races, but despite her many shortcomings got her revenge as a broodmare.
Santos’ first foal was the 2:18 (1.25,8) mare Episode, born 1892, by Ambassador. She won a few times for Johnston and in 1898 she was bred to her three-year-old brother Peter the Great. This resulted in the very first foal of the great stallion, a highly inbred filly called Miss Victoria who never made it to the races.
Best known, of course, as the dam of Peter the Great, Santos had nine foals. Seven were trotters. All started and all were winners. The other two were pacers, and for breeder DD Streeter that meant there would be no race career. In the old days, pacers were seen as second-, or even third-rate, to trotters. In fact, a mare throwing several pacers would generally reflect negatively on the her abilities as a broodmare.