The Sheriff’s queen
by Lisa Harkema
When Soviet trainer Maria Burdova wanted to drive Apex Hanover in the Prix d’Amerique in 1965 she was denied with the explanation that sitting in a sulky “is an unnatural position for a woman.” 30 years later the world had finally moved forward and Helen Ann Johansson became the first female driver to win the Prix d’Amerique when she drove Ina Scot to victory.
The story of Ina Scot actually starts with an unhappy owner – or, more correctly, his friends. Carl-Henric Brandel, Ina Scot’s breeder, owned several horses in training with Kjell P Dahlström. According to Dahlström, “like many owners he listened to what others were saying, including a lawyer who was friends of the owners of Swedish Derbywinner Big Spender. He was saying to Brandel that they shouldn’t have their horses in our training. It is old and well-known, that it’s often the owners’ friends who move their horses.” But the move backfired and within two years, in the summer of 1990, Brandel called Dahlström and asked for help. Dahlström went to look at his horses and while he thought that “most horses were crap” – it’s probably not a big surprise to add that Dahlström wasn’t known to filter his comments – he did like the 3-year-old Boss Nephew. He had driven the horse earlier and knew it had some potential, so in his mind there was at least one horse he could help find new owners for. The only negative about the three-year-old in Dahlström’s eyes was the dam, Lovisa Grefgård, “a mare who just couldn’t trot.” Helen A Johansson later stated, in a Youtube interview with Johan Lindberg, that, “Lovisa Grefsgård was a big horse, a chestnut and very solidly built. She was put in our training, but we had recommended to the owners that she should be a pleasure horse for his kids as she couldn’t trot. She was clueless. Then the owner stated he was going to have her bred. Our advice was to not bother. But the owner stood firm.”
Examining the rest of the horses, he found nothing of interest as most had bad conformation or some other negative trait. When he was told to drive and look at a yearling filly five minutes away, he reluctantly agreed, though as he later described, “I promise I was negative and could just as easily have gone home. We drove even further into the deep forest. Then she was there. INA SCOT. Bloody hell, what a racing type! I walked back and forth and looked, and commented to Jörgen Axen who was there, have you seen anything more racing-like? Looks good, quipped Jörgen. Looks good!?! I walked around the filly several more times and said to myself that I just had to have her.”