Hall of Fame

 



armbro flight

Year of Birth: 
1962
Inducted as a: 
Racehorse
Immortal: 
Yes
Elected as Immortal: 
1998
Year of Death: 
1995
Gait: 
Trotter
Record: 
2,2:04.4; 3,1:59
Earnings: 
$493,602
Sire: 
Star's Pride
Dam: 
Helicopter
Biography: 

A daughter of Star's Pride and Hambletonian winner Helicopter, Armbro Flight won 20 of 26 starts at two, with 4 seconds and 2 thirds. At three, she won 22 out of 26 races, including the Kentucky Futurity over the top colt Noble Victory. This was a two-heat event in which she beat him from behind in the first heat and from the top in the second. The effort was described as "awesome" and had horsemen calling her "one of the great trotting mares of all time."

A month earlier, Armbro Flight had lost by a head to finish second to Egyptian Candor in a grueling four-heat Hambletonian. The next week at Indianapolis she defeated Noble Victory in the race-off for the Horseman Futurity, with a blistering last quarter in :26.2. Her next stop before Lexington was Delaware, Ohio and her eleven-length win in 1:59.1h in the Walnut Hall Farm Stake, setting a world record for a trotting mare of any age on a half-mile track. Later that year she was voted 1965 Three-Year-Old Trotter of the Year over her male rival Noble Victory.

Armbro Flight had 9 wins in 13 starts as a four-year-old. Her most prominent race was her final career start, the 1996 1 1/4-mile $100,000 Roosevelt International, in which she established a new stakes record of 2:31.3h. She ended her racing career with 51 wins in 65 starts, with 8 seconds and 4 thirds for $493,602 in total earnings.

As a broodmare, Armbro Flight produced the winners of over $2 million, including Hambletonian winner Armbro Goal, as well as Armbro Regina and Armbro Ermine. Armbro Flight is buried at the Armstrong Brothers' farm, Inglewood, Ontario, Canada, where she lived to the grand age of thirty-three.

 Armstrong Farms, Brampton, Ontario, Canada

Published in the Harness Racing Museum's 1998 book, The 1998 Immortals