The story of Best Honey Hanover.

by Melissa Keith

On Sunday night (Dec. 17) at Rideau Carleton Raceway, there was a special winner’s circle presentation for Best Honey Hanover (p, 5, 1:51.0m; $291,736), the fastest pacing mare in the track’s 61-year history. After 52 wins and 158 lifetime starts, she was hanging up her hobbles for the last time. Trainer Macy Cassell Smyth said that Best Honey Hanover was officially retired to become a broodmare, and would be booked to Bettor’s Delight.

Now 8 years old, the daughter of Art Major—Best Chance Hanna was a $5,000 yearling at the 2016 Goshen Yearling Sale and started her career at New York fairs. Her Canadian racing debut was unremarkable: Jan. 7, 2022, Best Honey Hanover finished fifth in a Woodbine Mohawk Park qualifier, 25 lengths behind Poseidon Seelster.

Her first WMP victory came in her fifth Canadian start, when driver Austin Sorrie asked Best Honey Hanover to take on pacesetting favorite Major League N at the top of the stretch. Showing the late speed that became her trademark, Best Honey Hanover collared the leader to win going away in 1:53.4. She was claimed for $18,750 that race, by Keith Cassell of Smith Falls, ON. His granddaughter, Macy Cassell Smyth, became the mare’s trainer.

April 10, 2022, Best Honey Hanover and driver Pascal Berube beat a field of $25,000 claimers in her first Rideau Carleton victory. She was one of two mares in the strong eight-horse field; the other, Vines To Heaven, finished last.

Best Honey Hanover returned to Mohawk on June 10, 2022 teaming up with driver James MacDonald to win her first start there since being claimed. July 15, 2022, the mare recorded her fastest win of the year (1:52.4) in taking a Pop-Up Series leg for Austin Sorrie.

Macy Cassell Smyth said Sunday (Dec. 17) that the race replay is a particular favorite for herself and her husband, driver Drew Smyth.

“The announcer [Chad Rozema] says, ‘And she starts to close!’ And I’m just like: That’s just her!” Macy said. “Drew and I joke about her being this ‘predator’ that hunts down the leader, and she just wants to pass that horse so badly.”

Three days after Best Honey Hanover’s official retirement, Sorrie told HRU he enjoyed the 11 starts he shared with the powerful closer at Mohawk.

“Yeah, I’ll miss driving her, for sure,” said the 2020 O’Brien Future Star Award-winning driver. “We had a lot of luck with her there.

“I drove her once before, for the fella who had her before they claimed her [trainer Joe Pereira], so I knew the mare even before I drove her for them [owner Cassell and trainer Cassell Smyth]. I knew as long as you didn’t get too far back, that she’d fly home and she’d get them. As long as she wasn’t too far back, she’d beat them every time.”

Best Honey Hanover began this year at her home track, winning a Rideau qualifier and finishing fifth in her seasonal debut against males before returning to Mohawk. It took two additional starts before her first WMP victory of the year: Feb. 3, 2023, she and Sorrie hunted down Mach My Kiss to prevail by a head at the wire.

Capitalizing on a WMP class drop, they repeated on March 17, moving first-over from fifth on the final turn to take down 9-5 favorite Mystifying in the stretch and prevail at odds of 9-1. It would be Best Honey Hanover’s last win at Mohawk: Caught inside until too late on July 15, she lacked racing room in the stretch and finished ninth in her final start there.

Five days later, she would make history at Rideau Carleton.

On July 20, Best Honey Hanover and Berube tipped first over from third approaching three-quarters, inching in on breakaway leader Greystone Treasure in the top class for Rideau mares. At the top of the stretch, she was in full flight, soaring past for the 1:51.3 victory.

“She was a sweet mare to drive,” Sorrie said. “The first quarter, she wouldn’t really pace the best, but she wouldn’t run… It was almost like she had to get herself thawed out, and once she had thawed out, in the last turn, she was perfect.”

Even in her earlier racing days at half-mile Saratoga, Freehold, and Yonkers, Best Honey Hanover distinguished herself with a breathtaking late turn of foot. Reflecting on the mare’s reputation as a strong closer, Sorrie said he’s noticed that harness horses are not usually defined by one racing style throughout their entire career.

“Some might start out racing on the front, and some might start racing off of the back, and as they get older, they kind of change their racing tactics,” Sorrie said. “Kind of like, starting out racing from off the pace, and then off-the-pace horses become frontrunners. It’s weird how it goes.”

He added that Best Honey Hanover’s late-career style suited the track configuration of Canada’s only seven-eighth-mile harness track.

“I think she likes Mohawk,” he said. “She liked the straightaways.”

She also had the personality that every driver wants in a race mare.

“She liked to win,” Sorrie said. “She’ll be a good broodmare.”

After a place finish to Greystone Treasure Sept. 28 at Rideau, Best Honey Hanover was unofficially retired to her family home in Metcalfe, ON.

“She’s kind of our free-range horse; she does what she pleases,” Cassell Smyth told track announcer John MacMillan in a Dec. 17 interview. “Grandpa [Keith Cassell] is 80, and he can take her out and jog her. She’s such a gem. So, when we reached these milestones with her, he was just ecstatic… He’s been a longtime owner in the business, and he’s been here since the beginning of Rideau so to have a [divisional] record here is super special to him, especially with me training.”

Trackside in Sunday night’s driving rain, Cassell Smyth proudly led “Honey” back from the Rideau winner’s circle, and told HRU what makes the mare “best” of her eight-year training career.

“It’s all her heart,” she said. “Every time that she steps on the track, she just tries her hardest. Everything she does, she does from her heart. She’s just such a special horse to us. We’ve just been blessed to have her.”