click on the fish  to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French,German, Greek, Italian,Japanese, Korean,Portuguese,Spanish, or Russian  PRIDE OF MIDNIGHT H.F. Pride of Midnight was sired by Midnight Sun and was a product of Pride Of Stanley was a noted show horse and the leading sire of his time. Indeed the pride of Harlinsdale Farm, he produced a legacy of world champion offspring in every division including WC Pride's Generator. The Pride offspring were renown for being talented, easy to train, pretty, and "fast makers". In other words, they were ready to show quickly, most as two year olds. Pride of Midnight was the product of WGC Midnight Sun and Pride of Stanley. Midnight Sun was a legend in his own time as well as now. Not only was he twice World Grand Champion, but he also earned 13 blues at the National Celebration. He was undoubtedly one of the most influential sires of his time and has sired countless world champions.
In 1965 MIDNIGHT SUN
died. Harlinsdale Farms
had three colts to carry on his bloodlines: PRIDE OF MIDNIGHT,
SUN'S DARK BEAM and MIDNIGHT ALLEN. They were from the last crop of
MIDNIGHT SUN colts. They decided we would not let any of them go.
The colts were broken out at Harlinsdale and then sent to Dot
Warren for finishing.
It was decided that they were all keepers.
Their judgment was vindicated; they all proved to be very
good breeding horses. When they were 4 years old, they were
put into service. PRIDE
didn't breed many mares until he was five, so they showed him the
year he was four. It
was unfortunate that PRIDE did not catch on early, but Mr. Harlin
believed in him and told people as early as 1971, "Believe me, this
horse is going to turn this industry around’.
PRIDE'S dam was owned
by Mr. Worrell at Solitude Stock Farm, but he was owned by
Harlinsdale Farms before he was registered.
PRIDE had a funny personality. He was pop-eyed and he
stood up in the cross-ties, he was a show horse from the day one.
He could do a lot when Dot Warren was riding him, but when
they decided to take him to the Celebration they brought him right
back home and left him from that day forward.
Harlinsdale Farms had
a hard time convincing folks that they
had the horse of the
future but Pride had a lot of freedom up front.
At the time, the industry didn’t have the big foot as they do
now and it took a lot get a horse's foot up. But PRIDE could
do it with a lot of ease and
he had a natural kind of snort and show horse ways.
The trouble was, a lot of trainers put him down hard.
They said you can't fix [sore] his colts - they won't take
it. Such trainers were missing the message that Harlinsdale
Farms was trying to convey which was: "We've got a horse that you
don't need to fix that way.
He does it naturally." But they had a hard time. There
were some very vicious attacks against Harlinsdale Farms and
PRIDE OF MIDNIGHT during
that period. The result
was that over half of the colts PRIDE sired, were sired during the
last two years that he live.
To quote Bill Harlin,
“He was put down so hard by so many people "You can't
fix his colt”….That is a blight on our industry as far as I am
concerned.”
In 1979, PRIDE passed away after two colic attacks. That was
the last times Bill Harlin saw his father in tears. |
