For the past 25 years, a select group of Canada’s top horses and people have been honoured with the sport’s most prestigious award – the O’Brien. This year, we pay tribute to the winners who have stood boldly at the top of the podium, and reveal your picks for the O’Brien Dream Team.
Over the next few weeks, Trot Insider will feature one of the Dream Team selections as well as a race from that horse's illustrious career.
This week we profile Three-Year-Old Trotting Filly Peaceful Way. Peaceful Way was anything but quiet on the racetrack. The all-Canadian trotting mare, born, bred and raised in Ontario to longtime owner Angie Stiller of Stonebridge Farms in Arva, earned over $3.2 million in five racing seasons, won a record four O’Brien Awards as the best in Canada in her class and was victorious 33 times in 52 starts.
Peaceful Way set her lifetime mark of 1:51.4 at age four at the Meadowlands and was also honoured twice as the best trotting mare in her class in the United States.
The highlight of Peaceful Way’s career came in 2006 when she surpassed $3 million in lifetime earnings with a stirring triumph against the sport’s best older male trotters in the 55th edition of the Maple Leaf Trot.
“The Maple Leaf Trot definitely was her greatest win. It’s fantastic to have owned such a horse as her, who I regard, and Dave (Tingley) does, too, as probably the fastest trotting mare that ever lived,” said co-owner Joe Myers.