Days after Fresh Breeze lost her latest foal, her most famous daughter Twin B Joe Fresh was named the Dan Patch Horse of the Year.

by Melissa Keith

Last Sunday night (Feb. 23), Twin B Joe Fresh (p, 4, 1:47.3m; $2,335,765) became the second pacing mare in the history of the sport to be voted the USHWA Dan Patch Horse of the Year. Although bred by Brittany Farms of Versailles, KY, the daughter of Roll With Joe—Fresh Breeze is very much a product of Twinbrook Farms, in Embro, ON. She was foaled there on Feb. 15, 2020.

Twin B Joe Fresh’s Dan Patch Older Female Pacer, Pacer, and Horse of the Year awards were the icing on the cake following her stellar 4-year-old season. The powerhouse mare recorded 11 wins and two place finishes from 13 starts last year, earning $895,562 for her owners: trainer Chris Ryder of Allentown, NJ, driver Dexter Dunn of Millstone, NJ, Peter Trebotica of Bordentown, NJ, and Barry Spak of Thornton, PA. She sold as a yearling at the 2021 Harrisburg Black Book Sale.

“It’s unreal; it’s really unbelievable,” said Tammy McNiven, who owns and operates Twinbrook with her husband Rob. “We’re so ecstatic.”

The couple were at the Dan Patch Awards banquet at the Rosen Centre in Orlando, FL, for the announcement of Twin B Joe Fresh’s remarkable title. That was not the original plan.

“Our kids bought us tickets for Christmas, because we weren’t going to come,” Tammy told HRU on Wednesday (Feb. 26). “They said, ‘She has the ‘Twin B’ moniker, even though you didn’t breed her.’ She was born and raised in Ontario at our farm. We had to be there, because she’s still our baby. We did everything but inseminate the mare.”

The Dan Patch Awards banquet was a welcome celebration for the people behind the Twin B prefix. Tammy told HRU they had been through recent heartache with Fresh Breeze, who lost a Confederate colt just two weeks ago.

“The stifles got locked on her pelvis, and we couldn’t save the foal. [Francis Dumouchel] had to drive to the University of Guelph, through a snowstorm, to get the foal out. He was already dead… There were 10 or 12 people there when Rob arrived, to help get the foal out; a couple of surgeons in case we had to do a C-section. There’s a huge team there.”

Fresh Breeze stayed at the Ontario Veterinary College for two nights.

“A lot of times mares will retain the placenta when they have dystocia like that, which she did,” Tammy said. “She retained one of the horns, so they had to flush her a few times to make sure that the one horn was flushed out and she was healthy enough to come home.”

Fresh Breeze was previously in foal to Bulldog Hanover in 2023, but lost both embryos when one twin was pinched off.

“It’s not only the financial hit down the road that’s going to be bad,” Tammy said. “People don’t understand how emotional it is for us, for people that do this. You just feel awful for that poor mare because she has to go through a depression herself, because she’s lost a baby. People who aren’t into sentiment probably don’t realize that it’s a real thing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to compare an animal to a person, but [mares] do go through an emotional depression themselves, until they realize that baby is dead.”

Fortunately, the first three yearlings out of Fresh Breeze sold by Twinbrook fetched $675,000, combined, including a Bettors Delight-sired colt named Twin B Fresh Bet that sold for $500,000 at the 2023 Standardbred Horse Sale Company yearling sale. It was the most expensive yearling ever sold by Twinbrook.

Even more fortuitous, Fresh Breeze was saved despite losing her Confederate foal. Tammy said the mare’s reproductive health appeared “very, very good” for the future.

“She’ll be able to carry foals…” she said. “We have her booked to Sweet Lou this year.”

The McNivens acquired Fresh Breeze, carrying Twin B Joe Fresh, at the 2019 Standardbred Horse Sales Company’s Mixed Sale. Buying Fresh Breeze was not the McNivens’ original plan.

“We had a filly picked out that was out of a sister to the dam of Papi Rob Hanover,” Tammy said. “We wanted that filly out of the sale, and we were basically going to put all our eggs into one basket, because we knew she was going to be quite expensive, because that was the year Papi Rob was 3.

“So, my daughter, Jenna, she was walking where Preferred [Equine] had their mares all lined up, just before they go to the sales ring. She called us and she said, ‘Mom and dad, I found our mare. I love her-she’s just beautiful.’”

The McNivens connected with Jenna at the back walking ring just as Fresh Breeze was about to enter the sales ring.

“Rob and I didn’t even have time to look at her, but we trust Jenna and her judgement,” Tammy said. “We had a little leeway, a little bit of money over what we had marked for Paisley Hanover. And you know, she brought $21,000.”

She speculated that the price reflected Roll With Joe’s lack of popularity as a sire at the time.

Tammy said she and her husband had set a low bar for success with Fresh Breeze.

“We just thought that if we could just get what we paid for the mare on that first foal, it would be okay, because then we could breed the mare to a more commercially optimal stallion,” she said.

While in foal, Fresh Breeze had lived at Brittany Farms for the six months required by the Kentucky Standardbred Development Fund and the Kentucky Standardbred Breeders’ Incentive Fund. Roll With Joe was standing at Blue Chip Farms in Wallkill, NY, at the time.

“So, when we sold [Twin B Joe Fresh], she was not only New York-eligible, she was Kentucky-eligible,” Tammy said. “Chris Ryder had some of that family — he loves that family — so he paid $65,000 for her at the yearling sale.”

Jenna named the filly after an inexpensive Canadian clothing brand sold at Loblaws grocery stores. “Joe” and “Fresh” came from her sire and dam’s names.

The McNivens have followed Twin B Joe Fresh’s career closely, attending races in person whenever possible.

“We didn’t miss any of her races in Canada, except for when my sister happened to get married the night [Twin B Joe Fresh] was in Toronto and was third to Sylvia Hanover,” Tammy said.

The 2023 Fan Hanover final remains the mare’s only defeat at Woodbine Mohawk Park. In 2024, she dominated in the Roses Are Red elimination and final, returning later to capture the Milton Stake over 2023 Canadian Horse of the Year Sylvia Hanover.

“We saw her race at The Red Mile, because we always go to Lexington every fall to watch races, and I think that’s the only two tracks we’ve watched her race at, live,” Tammy said. “Other than that, we watch her on simulcast… We never miss a race.”

Looking back, Tammy said that Twin B Joe Fresh was winning races and breaking barriers before she was ever harnessed.

“She was always the first one to the feed bin… She wanted her meal,” Tammy said. “We bring all our yearlings in about the first of August, to prep for the sales. As time went on, and Jenna got to see her in the paddock more and more, it’s more individual and she got a sense of her… Our fields for turnout are about 300 feet long, and ‘Joe Fresh’ was so fast and powerful, she broke a couple of gates because she couldn’t get stopped at the gateway.”

Despite the loss of Fresh Breeze’s Confederate foal, Tammy said she was really excited to learn that Twin B Joe Fresh will race again this season, because, “I don’t think we saw the bottom of her last year.”

Every time Twin B Joe Fresh goes behind the starting gate, she carries the Twinbrook Farms prefix to greater prominence.

“We’re Ontario-based and we’ve basically grown our business over the years, and we’ve put out some nice horses,” Tammy said. “We’ve had quite a presence at Harrisburg for about the last 27 years we’ve been selling yearlings there. I think the last three or four years, we’ve had a stronger presence. The yearling buyers definitely know where she comes from, and where all the Twin B horses come from.”