Gimpanzee Bay horse, 3 by Chapter Seven – Steamy Windows by Muscle Massive OWNER: Courant Inc, FL [Anders Strom & Sabine Kagebrandt] & SRF Stable, FL [Lennart Agren and Jan Johnson] BREEDER: Order By Stable, Sweden ​ SALE INFO: Standardbred Horse Sale, Harrisburg $170,000 TRAINER: Marcus Melander ​ DRIVER: Brian Sears YEAR STARTS 1ST 2ND 3RD EARNINGS MARK ​ ​ 2019 3 3 0 0 $161,688 1:52.4 TgDn 2018 9 9 0 0 $591,358 1:54.3 VD LIFETIME 11 11 0 0 $753,046 3 1:52.4 TgDn ● Gimpanzee returned for his three year old campaign a perfect three for three with a win in the Empire Breeders Class and two wins in the New York Sire Stakes. ● Going into his sophomore season trainer Melander commented,“He’s doing good.” “He’s filled out nicely. He’s not the biggest horse but we’ve been very happy with him all winter. He doesn’t make any noise here at home, he just looks like a regular horse. He’s nice and calm. I can’t be more excited for his season to start.” ● According to Sears, “He’s a pro, acts the same way a 10-year-old does. Nothing bothers him.” ● Gimpanzee received the 2018 Dan Patch Award for best 2-year-old male trotter from the U.S. Harness Writers Association. ● After taking the Breeders Crown final Melander said “He’s like an aged horse. You can do whatever you want with him in a race. He’s got a lot of stamina and a lot of speed and everything went well.” ● Won his Breeders Crown elimination and then easily pulled away from foes in the Breeders Crown final to make it nine for nine in his two year old season. ● The talented colt romped his way through six wins in New York Sires Stakes ahead of setting a track record with his seventh win when taking the Agriculture and NYS Horse Breeding Development Fund Two-Year-Old Colt/Gelding Trot in a swift 1:56.3. ● Brian Sears, 51, is a three-time winning driver in the Hambletonian and two-time winner of the Hambletonian Oaks. ● He won both the Hambletonian and Oaks in 2009, earning his Hambletonian victory with Muscle Hill and Oaks triumph with Broadway Schooner. He became the first driver to win the Hambletonian and Oaks in the same year. In 2013, he repeated the double, winning the Hambletonian with Royalty For Life and the Oaks with Bee A Magician. ● In 2015, Sears won the Hambletonian with Pinkman. Yannick Gingras drove Pinkman to victory in his elimination, but opted to drive filly Mission Brief, also an elimination winner, in the final. ● Sears is among five drivers to win the Hambletonian three times. John Campbell holds the record, with six, and there are four drivers tied for second place, with four. They are Ben White, Billy Haughton, Stanley Dancer, and Mike Lachance. ● In July, Sears won his third Meadowlands Pace, guiding Best In Show to victory for trainer Linda Toscano, who had been inducted into the Hall of Fame six days earlier. ● For his career, Sears has won more than 10,100 races and $192 million in purses. He ranks 17th in North American history for wins among drivers and fifth in purses. He led the sport in earnings in 2005, with a then-record $15 million, and has finished among the top 10 in purses 13 of the past 15 years. ● In 2018, Sears ranked 13th in purses despite having the fewest starts of any driver in the top 45. Sears won nine races worth at least $250,000, including the million-dollar Yonkers International Trot and three Breeders Crown finals. Five of his top victories came behind McWicked, who was named 2018 Horse of the Year, and he also was the regular driver of undefeated 2-year-old male trotter Gimpanzee. ● Sears has driven four Horse of the Year award winners: Rocknroll Hanover in 2005, Muscle Hill in 2009, Bee A Magician in 2013, and McWicked in 2018. ● He received the 2009 Driver of the Year Award from the U.S. Harness Writers Association and was the 1991 Rising Star Award recipient from the same organization. ● A native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sears is a third-generation horseman, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Gene and dad Jay. Both are in the Florida Harness Racing Hall of Fame. ● Sears was inducted into the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in Goshen, N.Y., in 2017. ● Marcus Melander, 27, made his Hambletonian debut in 2017 and saw Enterprise win his elimination and then finish fourth-placed-third in the final. Melander’s Long Tom also raced in an elimination, leading through three-quarters of a mile before going off stride and failing to reach the final. ● In 2018, Melander-trained Evaluate finished fourth in his Hambletonian elimination and fifth in the final. ● Melander received the 2018 Rising Star Award from the U.S. Harness Writers Association. He joined Nancy Johansson as the only trainers to receive the honor in the past 20 years. His stable earned $2.86 million in purses in 2018, good for 15th among all trainers in North America, despite having the fifth-fewest starts among all trainers in the top 50. ● The Melander-trained colt Gimpanzee received the Dan Patch Award for best 2-year-old male trotter after going 9-for-9 in 2018 at age 2. Other top wins in 2018 for his stable included the $1 million Yonkers International Trot with Cruzado Dela Noche and the Maple Leaf Trot with Crazy Wow. ● Melander came to the U.S. from Sweden less than five years ago and worked for four-time Hambletonian-winning trainer Jimmy Takter before starting his own stable in late 2014. He is based in New Egypt, N.J., at a farm that was home previously to each the legendary Stanley Dancer, a five-time Hambletonian winner, and Continental Farms stables. Melander has won more than 150 races and $6 million in purses in his career. ● Growing up in Sweden, Melander stayed up all hours of the night following the results of U.S. harness racing. He was making a name for himself as a driver in Europe but was always fascinated by racing in the States. At age 19, Melander won Sweden’s equivalent to the U.S. Harness Writers Association’s Rising Star Award. He had just more than 100 wins when the Melanders moved to America. ● Melander’s uncle, Stefan Melander, won the 2001 Hambletonian as trainer and driver with Scarlet Knight. ● “We started at first to call him The Monkey,” said Strom, by way of explaining the talented trotter’s unusual name. “I want to name all my horses that are born in the same year with the same letter, so it was ‘G’ in that year. This was probably the last one to name and we couldn’t come up with a good name, and we had already nicknamed him The Monkey, then I just said, ‘For God’s sake, just name him Gimpanzee or whatever.’ And now that the horse is good, it’s fantastic.” ● Sire Chapter Seven earned nearly $2 million and was named 2012 Trotter of the Year. He also sired 2018 Hambletonian champion filly Atlanta. ● Gimpanzee’s owners SRF Stable (Lennart Agren) also won the Hambletonian in 2017 with Perfect Spirit. .