by Melissa Keith

Despite the name, Highland Thoroughbred Frm is also Mary Clark’s Inglewood, ON standardbred farm. This year, the owner/breeder reached a career pinnacle in harness racing, thanks to homebred star Highland Kismet. In a season of proud moments, Clark told HRU that her favorite was when the unraced 3-year-old gelding suddenly turned a corner in an April 26 Woodbine Mohawk Park qualifier.

“Well, we didn’t know what we had right?” she said with a laugh. “Go back and look at that qualifier. Mark [Etsell] was the driver, and he was in the back, and all of a sudden, ‘Kismet’ just took off and just kept going, on his own. He won the qualifier in a really good time. So, we knew right there that we had something of real interest, and then he went on to win several races after that… Well, many races after that.”

Highland Kismet (3, 1:51.1s; $485,806) won his first career start May 2 at Mohawk, an off-the-pace 1:54.4 effort for Bob McClure, his driver in every subsequent start. The Father Patrick—Highland Top Hill gelding has eight victories in 13 starts this season, taking his mark in a Sept. 14 Canadian Trotting Classic elimination at his home track. His 1:51.1 mile is Canada’s fastest by a 3-year-old trotter and a Mohawk track record for 3-year-old trotting geldings.

The 2024 Hambletonian runner-up had a slow beginning to his career, but an owner who believed in his potential.

“He was not with the program [at age 2],” said Clark. “He wasn’t difficult, but he wasn’t focused. We had him castrated at 2, and you can debate that; Would Kismet be Kismet if he hadn’t been [gelded]? We don’t know, right?”

She recalled how 2023 O’Brien Award of Horsemanship winner Mark Etsell told her he was unsure whether Highland Kismet would amount to much on the racetrack, but agreed to work with him.

“One day, they just took him around the track and he just snapped to it,” said Clark. “They gave him more opportunities, then he did the qualifier and really shocked everybody.”

Everybody except Clark herself.

The 83-year-old owner said she trusted the genetics behind her top trotter. Clark bred and raced Highland Kismet’s dam, Highland Top Hill (5, 1:52.4s; $148,624).

“’Top Hill’ did race moderately well, and we decided to keep her as a broodmare,” she told HRU. “She was second to Ariana G [in the 2017 Kentucky Filly Futurity]. It was so muddy that the drivers could not see.

“Every foal she’s had — Kismet was her first — is a beautiful animal. Kismet’s half-brother [Highland Destiny] is going to train with Mark [Etsell], probably in December. He’s a Greenshoe. Then she has a beautiful filly, [Highland] Firen Ice. She’s a wonderful broodmare, and I remember when I first started out, somebody told me that the broodmare really is the key.”

Highland Top Hill’s second foal is a full sister to Highland Kismet, Highland Starburst. The 2-year-old filly has two show finishes from five starts, racing exclusively at Mohawk and race timed in 1:55.1 in the Aug. 24 Peaceful Way Stake final.

“Sometimes it doesn’t come together for a while, as we found out with Kismet,” said Clark. “She shows signs of maturing and going on, but I really don’t expect to get two Kismets in a row.”

Highland Thoroughbred Frm started out in the thoroughbred pinhooking business, raising young horses for resale as yearlings, but soon moved into standardbred breeding. Mary and her late husband, Jack Clark, were new to the horse industry. Jack had just retired from a successful career in mining equipment manufacturing after a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Mary had worked as a nurse. They relocated to Inglewood, ON from Toronto.

“We were sitting here on this farm and we thought, what are we going to do with it?” Mary said. “My husband said ‘Well, we should grow hemp.’ And then a friend suggested we call a girl named Christina Anderson, who worked in London, ON and managed a horse stable there. Christina came with us, and that’s when we started pinhooking. We went on to standardbreds after that. She was here for a couple of years, and then she was killed in a plane crash [in 2006].”

Jack passed away in 2008, but not before founding the Jack Clark Chair in Parkinson’s Disease Research at the University of Toronto, and working with Mary to establish Highland Thoroughbred Frm, with former Amstrong Brothers broodmares as a foundation. The inaccurate farm name stuck.

“My manager at the time, when we were just starting off, said we should call it ‘thoroughbred’ because ‘thoroughbred’ has a lot more status,” Mary said. “Basically, [pinhooking] didn’t work out too well, so we transitioned to standardbreds. I really would like to change the name, because we are a standardbred breeding farm.”

The Clarks purchased SJ’s Image (2, 2:00.1f; $57,198), Highland Kismet’s maternal great-granddam, from the Armstrong Brothers’ broodmare dispersal. Long known by their horses’ “Armbro” prefix, the Inglewood, ON farm was Canada’s top standardbred breeder for 50 years before winding down operations in the early 2000s. SJ’s Image produced Highland Image (3, 1:54.1s; $17,823), Highland Kismet’s maternal granddam, in 2007.

Highland Image was exported to Italy in 2018.

“I sold her, unfortunately,” Mary said. “I was collecting an awful lot of horses.”

Highland Thoroughbred Frm made its reputation as a boutique breeder with a small staff and mares sometimes outsourced to other farms.

“Basically, we can manage,” Mary said. “We only had, at our peak, five broodmares here… We have lots of land where they can get good grass… They have the whole summer to graze. We look after the horses really well here.”

She said she considered Highland Kismet the reward for years of dedication to her horses.

“It’s a matter of kismet, really, that all this happened,” Mary said. “It was just being in the right place at the right time.”

The Sept. 21 Canadian Trotting Classic final at Mohawk has been the only real disappointment of Highland Kismet’s season. Seven days later at The Red Mile, McClure guided the gelding to a muddy 1:55.1 romp in his Bluegrass Stake division, and explained what went wrong in the previous start.

“He just choked,” McClure told interviewer Bob “Hollywood” Heyden. “He got ramped up getting out of there [in the CTC final at Mohawk], horses came out under him, and he was in a bad spot. I ended up shutting his air off and he run. I had no intention of racing him from off the pace, but I got caught in a similar situation, between two horses, and he didn’t want to go up to the [starter] car. Luckily, though, he was an absolute sweetheart in the hole, and the way it all worked out, that’s the way you want to go into the [Kentucky] Futurity. That’s probably as good or the best he’s been.”

Mary said she couldn’t attend The Red Mile for the Bluegrass, but she watched it from home and appreciated McClure’s explanation of Highland Kismet’s rare miscue.

“I was really proud of Bob for mentioning that,” she said.

The proprietor of Highland Thoroughbred Frm said that 2024 is a pivotal year for the Ontario standardbred nursery.

“I wish I was [younger],” Mary told HRU. “Then I would keep going. I do sell some, but I am 83, so I am divesting myself. The horses that are going to Mark [Etsell] this year will be the last horses. I’m not producing any more babies. I’m a very tenacious person. I don’t give up easily, but you’ve got to face reality when you’re in your 80s and you’ve got to plan for the life of your horses after you’re not here.”

Mary said she intended to sell Highland Top Hill this fall, and to sell her 2024 King Of The North filly, Highland Firen Ice, as a yearling next fall. Spring Station of Midway, KY will handle the consignments.

Her only pacing broodmare, the unraced Highlandbeachbelle, is at Diamond Creek Farm and in foal to Bettors Delight.

“She’s the last one of the series,” Mary said. “I’ve got to be careful I don’t breed more and more horses. I have seven retired horses here, and of course Kismet’s mother [Highland Top Hill], Highlandbeachbelle, and four going into training with Mark [Etsell] late this year. And that’s it.”

But it’s far from the end of her love affair with standardbreds.

“I do have this propensity for keeping my horses,” she said. “You do get a little concerned about their maintenance and where they’re going to go and how many you’re going to have. I even take back some of my horses that I’ve sold.”

Highland Kismet represents the past and future of Highland Thoroughbred Frm.

“I’m looking forward to many more good years with him,” said Mary, calling the late-blooming trotter her “cool dude” despite some hot temperaments on both sides of his pedigree. “He’s not an excitable horse. You feel very comfortable when you’re around him. Actually, you feel very peaceful when you’re around him. He’s just a special, special horse.”

Asked about 2024 Breeders Crown plans, Mary replied that she had one: “To win. And I will be there for that one, for sure.”

She said Highland Kismet will winter comfortably in Kentucky after the Oct. 26 championships at The Meadowlands, and return to racing next year.

Mary called Highland Kismet a welcome culmination of her dreams, one who will stay with her even as she scales back in the industry.

“I love animals anyway, so it’s wonderful to love an animal and have him reward you at the same time,” she said. “Animals reward you anyway, but he’s really rewarding me as best he can.”