Dance Smartly

Dance Smartly (1988–2007) was a Champion Thoroughbred racemare who went undefeated in 1991 while winning the Canadian Triple Crown and becoming the first horse bred in Canada to win a Breeders' Cup race. She was inducted into both the Canadian and American Racing Halls of Fame. Bred in Ontario by Ernie Samuel's Sam-Son Farm, Dance Smartly was a bay mare with a distinctive white star on her forehead that earned her the nickname Daisy. She was by Danzig, one of Northern Dancer's most influential sire sons. Her dam was the Canadian Hall of Fame mare Classy 'n Smart by Smarten. She was trained by Jim Day. Racing career As a two-year-old, Dance Smartly won three of five races, including the Natalma Stakes, and finished third in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. She won the Sovereign Award for Canadian champion two-year-old filly. At age three, she developed into one of the top Thoroughbreds in North America, going undefeated in the 1991 racing season. In her first two starts of the year, she was ridden by Brian Swatuk to easy victories in the Star Shoot and Selene Stakes. In the remainder of her three-year-old campaign, she was ridden by American Hall of Fame jockey Pat Day. Her victory in the Canadian Oaks, Canada's most important race for three-year-old fillies, was so dominant that her owner decided to race her next against the colts. Dance Smartly became the second filly (after Queensway in 1932) to capture the Canadian Triple Crown by winning the Queen's Plate, the Prince of Wales Stakes, and the Breeders' Stakes by a combined eighteen lengths. She next won the Molson Export Million, earning her first graded stakes victory as her previous races had been restricted to Canadian-bred horses.