The race to lower the world record of Maud S. 2.08 3/4 had been a close one between Sunol and Nancy Hanks.

When the latter had paused at 2.09, Sunol had gone on to victory in 2.08 1/4. Sunol’s performance marked the end of an era however, as it closed the term of the high wheeled sulky; the ‘bike’ with its pneumatic tyres coming into use the following season in 1892 with results which could only be described as revolutionary.

Sunol, a daughter of Electioneer, received no advantage from it, with lameness terminating her career as the world champion to high wheels, a soon to be and now long forgotten fact.

Conversely, Nancy Hanks went on to triumphs which were not only record breaking, but which placed her upon a pedestal high above her rivals and contemporaries.

Bred by Hart Boswell, one of Kentucky’s oldest and most respected breeders at his Poplar Hill farm, Nancy Hanks was born not only the same year as Sunol, but 1886 also marked the arrival of the influential sires Axtell and Allerton.

Inbred 2x3 to Hambletonian 10, she was by Happy Medium from Nancy Lee, one of the most eminent producing daughters of Dictator; grandam Sophie, by Edwin Forrest, one of the foundation sires at Woodburn Farm. Sophie was also the dam of Julia Ann Johnson, who in 1871 became the first 2-year-old to break 2.50 when she took a record of 2.45 1/4.

Thus for her day, Nancy Hanks was intensely ‘trotting bred’. However, she was not a born trotter, in fact quite the reverse.

Her gait was so mixed and her pacing tendency so strong that her skilled trainer Ben Kenney, after trying all other modern methods known to his profession at that time, fell back upon the old fashioned one of laying down fence posts so spaced that she was obliged to take to the trot in order to step over them.

Kenney’s patience in the end was rewarded by her rapid progress once she found herself in this way.

Named in honour of the mother of the greatest of Kentucky’s sons, Abraham Lincoln, Nancy Hanks came out as a 3-year-old at Harrisburg where for a small purse she defeated a field of six in 2.25 1/4 after losing the first heat to Bonny Wilmore in 2.28 3/4.

This would be the only time in her five seasons on a racetrack that any other horse led her to the finish.

Another remarkable fact about this race and the field she in the end beat was that, besides Bonny Wilmore, the four other competitors were also to become famous as matrons - Abbie V., Catherine Leyburn, Mattie H. and Twist.

Nancy Hanks went on to win six races in succession over Kentucky tracks that year, the best in 2.24 1/2, which was a long way from the excitement generated by the performances of Axtell and Sunol.

Nevertheless those who witnessed Nancy Hanks were unanimous in their belief that she was the making of a champion, as she had indicated the possession of extreme speed without having the necessity to use it.

Her 4-year-old season disclosed what she had been holding back. It comprised six races, all but one in Kentucky, the exception being a match with Alabaster, a colt that had attained transitory fame by trotting in 2.15.

Again she moved gracefully through a series of the easiest possible victories, trotting her best heat in 2.14 1/2. It was palpable that, if fully extended, she might have touched 2.10.

By this time she was the most talked about trotter of the East, and Sunol’s disappointing performances that summer caused Nancy Hanks to be proclaimed the coming Queen of the turf.

So exalted had her reputation become that J. Malcolm Forbes paid Boswell $45,000 for her, a figure which was a new record price for a trotting mare and one not exceeded until 1909 when $50,000 was required to purchase Hamburg Belle 2.01 1/4 a few minutes after she had defeated Uhlan in their historic match race.

Forbes transferred Nancy Hanks to the hands of Budd Doble and by peculiar coincidence, just as Sunol had shown an intense aversion to new trainer Charles Marvin, the effect was duplicated.

She would give him everything in their public appearances, but she showed the utmost irritation whenever he came anywhere near her around the stables, and all of her slow work and much of her faster training were given by Doble’s assistants.

But no inkling of this appeared in her performances, in which she remained faultless.

Her 5-year-old career embraced nine races, the highlights being her defeat of Allerton for a $5000 purse at Independence, Iowa, where she trotted three heats in 2.12, 2.12 3/4 and 2.12, each of them faster than the previous world record of 2.13 held by Palo Alto; and her subsequent miles against time in 2.09 1/4 at Cambridge City and 2.09 in Richmond, Indiana.

The opening of 1892 found both Allerton and Sunol hopeless cripples, but Nancy Hanks came out as fresh as a daisy. Hitched to a bike, she began her record smashing with a mile in 2.07 1/4 at Chicago and a fortnight later at Independence she progressed to 2.05 1/2. A month later at Terre Haute, Indiana, came the supreme effort of 2.04, the first mile in 2.05 by a trotter.

As she then threw out danger signals and had earned over $60,000, Forbes wisely retired her to his farm in Boston where for him, prior to his death in 1904, she produced eight foals by either Arion, Bingen, Peter The Great or the imported English thoroughbred Meddler.

At the Forbes dispersal at the age of 18, she was sold for $4000 to J.M. Johnson and left three foals for him, one by John A McKerron and two by Todd. She was then sold to John E. Madden, but left no other foals before dying aged 29 and was buried at his famous cemetery at Hamburg Place, Lexington, where he erected a monument over her grave bearing a bronze portrait statuette.

As a matron Nancy Hanks upset the precedent hitherto prevailing that champion trotting mares were failures as speed producers. Of her 11 foals, all but one either performed or produced or both, the exception being a filly badly injured when young.

Six of them took Standard records, led by the Bingen colt Admiral Dewey 2.04 3/4 and Arion colt Lord Roberts 2.07 1/4, they being at the time of their records the two fastest produced by the same dam. The early death of Admiral Dewey was a great misfortune for the family, which suffered other adverse happenings.

Nevertheless the value of her blood was splendidly demonstrated. Her Bingen son, Malcolm Forbes, sired Gay Forbes, the dam of Billy Direct, who after three decades dethroned Dan Patch as world champion pacer with his monumental mark of 1.55.

Her daughter by Arion, Narion, produced Vice Commodore, the son of Bingen who sired Margaret Parrish, the dam of Margaret Castleton 1.59 1/4 and Arion Guy 1.59 1/2 and grandam of Protector 3, 1.59 1/4 and The Marchioness 3, 1.59 1/4, both world champions and Hambletonian winners. Margaret Parrish was also the grandam of a third Hambletonian winner in The Ambassador, His Excellency 3, 1.59 3/4 and Princess Peg, a Kentucky Futurity winner.

Individually, Nancy Hanks was a rich brown-bay and stood a shade over 15 hands. In type she bred after her Dictator dam, being elegantly, even daintily, high-bred in appearance. Though so mixed-gaited when young, she trained out of it so thoroughly that when she made her record she carried a 10-oz shoe.

She was one of the first of the new type of flying-gaited trotters - her stroke, while smooth, being very rapid with intense nervous force behind it.

Her gameness equalled her speed and she was the first trotter ever to cover a quarter in better than 30 seconds. Her manners were perfection itself, while losing just one heat she never once broke stride, and she stood as a superlative example of the standardbred (of that time) at its best.

Frank Marrion