At the Black Book Yearling Sale in 2006, Ken Sucee bought back an Art Major filly by the name of Arts Diva, on behalf of her co-breeder, Dr. David Legge, for $20,000. Then, over the next five years, Ken trained her to earnings of almost $700,000. Fast forward to 2020, and after a very solid career as a broodmare, Sucee and the Legge brothers named her final foal - a Bettors Delight filly - One Last Wish. 27 starts, $447,802 in earnings, and an O’Brien nomination later, that spectacular filly has made their wish come true. By Melissa Keith.
It started with a mare.
Three generationals later, O’Brien Award finalist One Last Wish is the culmination of dreams dating back to that foundation mare - Leggins.
The champion Ontario-bred three-year-old pacing filly of 2023, One Last Wish (p,3,1:50.1s; $447,802) is owned by brothers Brian Legge of Toronto and Dr. David Legge of Ajax, and she brought their wishes to life during the 2023 season, when she captured three Ontario Sires Stakes Gold legs and the October 14th OSS Super Final at Woodbine Mohawk Park for trainer Ken Sucee and regular driver Paul MacDonell.
Along with the aforementioned equine family, her story is also one of human families, tested by tragedies over time and united by Leggins’ descendants. Ken Sucee trained One Last Wish’s dam, Arts Diva (p,1:49.3s; $691,175), who is still owned by Brian and David Legge. The 19-year-old mare is alive, well, and living out her retirement at Kendal Hills Stud Farm, in Campbellcroft, Ontario, the same place where she was foaled.
“Arts Diva was bred by Mrs. [Annelies] Horn and David Legge,” said Sucee. “What happened was, Caliterra [p,3,1:54.2f; $55,242], the dam of Arts Diva, was the daughter of the Legge’s foundation mare, Leggins. Brian didn’t like Caliterra for a broodmare apparently, and I had offered to buy her, but David kept her, and I believe my late brother [the pedigree expert and TROT contributor Ralph Sucee] bought in for a piece of her, as did Mrs. Horn from Kendal Hills Stud Farm. Annelies was down with David [Legge] as the breeder. Ralph really wanted them to breed her to Art Major, and they did, but I think that before she was registered as a baby, my brother got out on her.”
Arts Diva was consigned to the 2006 Harrisburg Yearling Sale, but the first foal of Caliterra, from the first crop of Art Major, did not attract sufficient bidding. “David Legge asked me to go down and ‘protect’ her to $18,000 or $20,000,” said Sucee. “Subsequently, I got her back for $20,000… I was happy to keep her at that price if they didn’t want her, but they did… I was never owner on her. I just brought her back. I already had a couple of horses with the Legges, and I trained her all through her career for them.”
Arts Diva started rewarding her believers late in her two-year-old season. “She never, ever missed a beat,” said Sucee. “You never know how fast they’re gonna be, but I said, ‘This one is special.’”
A June foal, she had a relatively late start to her career, but proved a fast learner. She broke her maiden in her second lifetime start, in 1:55.4, at Kawartha Downs for driver Kurt Hughes. Her next win wouldn’t come until October 19th at Woodbine Racetrack, but it was in her Three Diamonds elimination, going away, for driver Paul MacDonell in 1:53.1. A week later she finished second to A And Gs Confusion in the rich $660,200 final.
“She just had the mannerisms, the gait. She was just so easy to get along with,” said her former trainer. “You couldn’t ask for a more perfect horse. Never did anything wrong. Never wore a headpole in her life… Drove straight. Just a super gait: She won over Flamboro in :52 and a piece, just off the track record at that time. She’d get around anywhere.”
Arts Diva’s early career was interrupted when two curses struck the Sucee family.
“I was not around as her two-year-old year progressed,” said Ken. “The night that we had her in the Shes a Great Lady final at Mohawk [September 1, 2007], my brother Ralph and my other brother were both coming up to the track, but Ralph was in a horrific and debilitating car accident on the 401… Well, four or five days later, I came down with a pancreatic attack; it put me in the hospital… So I missed most of her Grand Circuit stops [that year].”
It was actually Paul MacDonell who made sure the two-year-old Arts Diva made it to her last start of that freshman year - the $91,096 Trillium Stakes on November 4th at Windsor Raceway. Paul’s father, Blaise MacDonell, had been a superintendent at General Motors in Oshawa, where Ken’s father, Ronald Sucee, also worked for decades.
“I’ve known Paul for a lot of years, and Paul stepped up to the plate,” said Sucee. “He drove her all the way to Windsor on that November night and brought his bike. I told him to ‘get a groom’, and he didn’t. That boy took the horse all the way to Windsor and had her back in her stall at four o’clock in the morning.”
No small accomplishment, considering that MacDonell also drove Arts Diva to a 1:53.4 victory that night, and that she was stabled all the way out at Sucee’s former training centre in Bowmanville, Ontario. Although Sucee was able to eventually leave the hospital in time for the Trillium Awards, he said he was also lucky to have a talented newcomer - Kurt Hughes - training his horses while he was recovering.
“I hired [Hughes] when he came to me in April [2007]... him and [wife] Colleen - she’s a vet. At first I said ‘I don’t really need anybody’, but it was just his mannerisms,” says Sucee. “They had just come from the East Coast. [Colleen] was actually going to get a job with McKee-Pownall [Equine Services]... I showed Kurt different training things that I learned over the years, and he was actually my protégé.”
Arts Diva had won a qualifier at age two, in July, 2007 at Kawartha Downs, with Hughes in the sulky, and never missed the board with him driving in her first four pari-mutuel starts. Sucee credited Hughes with making the filly into the star she became: “He is responsible, really. He followed my directions, limited as I was, and Paul MacDonell was certainly a big, big part of that whole thing too.”
But Hughes’ work with the talented filly wouldn’t last past her three-year-old year, as tragedy struck once again. Sucee recalls how Kurt Hughes’ promising career as a trainer/driver came to an abrupt stop on November 1, 2008.
“That night at Kawartha Downs, [Kurt] had won with one of my horses… I remember looking for his parents in the grandstand, to give them a picture, because they were heading home [to Prince Edward Island] the next day.”
Driving home from the track that night though, Kurt’s car went off the road, resulting in severe permanent injuries.
“I was just shocked when I came to the barn the next day. It was a Sunday, and they [Kurt’s parents] said, ‘Have you heard yet?’ I was just devastated. So we went right to Toronto [Weston Hospital]… We didn’t get to see him, of course, right then. Two days later, I remember his Dad calling and telling us, ‘They’re working on him, trying to get him to breathe on his own.’ He eventually came out of it. He is a paraplegic, but the bottom line is that his mind is intact. His heart and soul is just amazing.”
Arts Diva, of course, raced on for Sucee and MacDonell - and the odd other catch-driver - and earned just shy of $200,000 both at age four and five. She recorded a career stat line of 81-14-22-10, while racing at the highest level, and taking on some of the greatest pacing mares of the modern era, including Dreamfair Eternal, My Little Dragon, Darlins Delight and Southwind Tempo.
Her retirement came in April 2011, when an old issue finally reared its head. Sucee said that veterinarian Dr. Terry Ruch had cautioned him that Arts Diva “had a bad sesamoid, back right” when she was a two-year-old. “He told me, ‘You might get through her two-year-old [season], but this is going to be her Achilles’ heel. When this mare is done, it will be because of this.’”
At age six, Arts Diva broke the sesamoid and was instantly retired. She was sent to Hanover Shoe Farms and bred to Well Said, resulting in the unraced Eloquent Diva.
Subsequent matings showed that Arts Diva was as strong a broodmare as she was a race mare. She produced Shes Lights Out (p,1:51.1s; $203,585) and Maroma Beach (p,1:50f; $384,951), both by Somebeachsomewhere, before the ill-fated Western Ideal son Phil The Thrill (p,3,1:50.2s; $109,210).
“He was a nice, big, beautiful horse, and he died on March 16th [2020]... right at Mohawk,” said Sucee. “My Dad died on March 13th and [Phil The Thrill] was racing on March 16th… I thought it would do me good to get out and race one. David Legge was there to give me support, racing his horse after my Dad died.” Instead, Phil The Thrill was pulled up with a broken pastern. “I was inconsolable,” recalled Sucee. “He was a really nice horse, a quiet gentleman.”
Arts Diva’s fifth, and second-to-last live live foal, was Touchem All Joe (p,1:54.2s; $39,918), by Roll With Joe, but she definitely saved her best for last. After a date with the king of pacing sires, Bettors Delight, Arts Diva gave birth to One Last Wish. “That’s where her name came from,” related Ken. “We knew it was going to be her final foal before being retired so the name made sense,” he laughs.
That ‘one last wish’ definitely came true for her connections, and Sucee calls the intelligent filly her dam’s carbon copy - except for in one regard perhaps. But more on that later.
“On conformation, [Arts Diva] was good, but as far as manners, she was the most perfect horse. I broke her by myself, in one day,” recalls the Bowmanville, Ontario horseman. “And One Last Wish was no different. Her dam passed it on to her. The other foals, between them, they were OK, but certainly not like One Last Wish.”
The 2023 O’Brien nominee resulted from a golden cross identified years earlier by Ken’s late brother Ralph: Most Happy Fella with Abercrombie.
“Back in the day, that gave us some great [horses],” said Ken, adding that Caliterra, Arts Diva’s dam, was paired with Art Major based exactly on that formula.
“Ronnie Waples had Armbro Dallas [$1,401,201], by Abercrombie out of a Most Happy Fella mare. It was a great cross, so you just take it a few generations further and you get Arts Diva by breeding the grandson of Abercrombie [Art Major] and the daughter [Caliterra] of a Most Happy Fella grandson named Camluck. So really, it was a no-brainer.”
Ralph Sucee would be proud that the formula once again came up golden for his brother years later, with multiple OSS Gold winner One Last Wish.
“We bred Arts Diva to Bettors Delight, who is Cams Card Shark/Cam Fella/Most Happy Fella, coming back into the Abercrombie line again with Arts Diva. We got quite a bit of Abercrombie in there, and Cam Fella, and it worked again.
“One Last Wish raced free-legged as a two-year-old many times; and she won last year, free-legged, in 1:50.1. Quite a gifted and natural little animal,” Ken beams.
An OSS Grassroots winner as well as a free-legged winner at Mohawk in 1:52.3 at age two, One Last Wish only added hopples at age three after a rare break in her ninth start of the year. “Nothing was wrong with her. She was just a little sore in her hamstrings,” said Sucee. “She’s a muscular filly, so I just rub them out with olive oil.”
With no reason to keep her free-legged, he added hopples for the rest of her starts. (“You don’t get any more money for having them off,” he quipped.)
Now four, One Last Wish is back home after spending downtime at Peninsula Farms in Georgetown, Kentucky. Her lifelong disinterest in training remains intact, as does her competitive spirit: She recently chased two trotting fillies around a paddock, kicking one in the belly.
“This is what makes her what she is,” explained Sucee. “When she’s with her own, she is the boss. I believe horses give off some kind of persona. I thought four horses were going by her in the [OSS Super] Final. Honest to God, just the way they always close up that last little bit [at Mohawk]. The way she did that last sixteenth [of a mile], it’s like my brother Rob flew into her lungs.” (Ken’s brother Robert Sucee passed away unexpectedly on December 24, 2022).
“I’m serious: I thought she was beat. The Legges thought she was beat… And then she just kicked in.”
That brings us to the one way that Sucee can think of where mother and daughter might just differ: “You know, Arts Diva never won off of a two-hole-trip in her life,” he laughs. “She’d always come second. Not only did this mare win the [OSS] Super Final off of a two-hole trip, but she’s never come second in her life! Arts Diva came second something like twenty-two times,” he exclaims.
One Last Wish will likely qualify twice at the end of March, in preparation for the Canadian Graduate Series at Woodbine Mohawk Park, and her trainer is even thinking of tackling the boys in the Juravinski Memorial perhaps. Her immediate battle however is on February 3rd in Charlottetown, when she is up against Dan Patch Award winner Sylvia Hanover for three-year-old pacing filly of the year at the O’Brien Awards.
While Sucee cannot attend the banquet in person, he said he will be cheering for both the Legge’s filly and a certain O’Brien Award of Horsemanship finalist; P.E.I. trainer/driver Jason Hughes - Kurt Hughes’ brother. Kurt is now a racing analyst with Red Shores Charlottetown.
“Jason works very, very hard,” said Sucee. “I don’t know how they do it out there. They just love their horses… It was also nice to see [Kurt] go back home and get established there.”
Meanwhile, One Last Wish isn’t yet finished fulfilling the promise of her pedigree and the faith (and wishes) of her connections. “Paul [MacDonell] said we never got to the bottom of her yet. When she won the Super Final she wasn’t even blowing. This filly, there’s just so much there,” reflected her grateful trainer. “Her mother was a bit like that too.”
And like her mother as well, this mare seems to be like a wish that just keeps on giving.
This feature originally appeared in the February issue of TROT Magazine. Subscribe to TROT today by clicking the banner below.
