Northern Baby

Northern Baby
Northern Baby, oil on canvas painted by Bob Demuyser (1920-2003)
Sire	Northern Dancer
Grandsire	Nearctic
Dam	Two Rings
Damsire	Round Table
Sex	Stallion
Foaled	1 April 1976
Country	Canada
Colour	Chestnut
Breeder	Kinghaven Farm
Owner	Anne-Marie d'Estainville
Trainer	Francois Boutin
Record	17:5-2-5
Major wins
Prix de la Cote Normande (1979) Champion Stakes (1979) Prix Dollar (1980)
Awards
Timeform rating 109 (1978), 127 (1979), 119 (1980)

Northern Baby (1 April 1976 – 21 February 2007) was a Canadian-bred, French-trained Thoroughbred racehorse and sire. In a racing career which lasted from October 1978 until September 1980 he won five of his seventeen races. After showing promising form as a two-year-old he emerged as a top-class middle-distance performer in 1979, winning the Prix de la Cote Normande in France but showing his best form in England, where he finished third in both the Epsom Derby and the Eclipse Stakes before recording his most important victory in the Champion Stakes. He remained in training as a four-year-old with mixed success, running several moderate races but defeating the outstanding filly Three Troikas in the Prix Dollar. He was retired to stud and became a very successful sire of steeplechasers. He died in 2007 at the advanced age (for a Thoroughbred) of thirty-one.

Northern Baby was a small, lightly-built chestnut horse with a narrow white blaze, two white socks and one white coronet, bred by the Kinghaven Farm Stud in Ontario. He was one of many important winners sired by the Canadian-bred Northern Dancer, who won the Kentucky Derby in 1964 before becoming one of the most successful breeding stallions in Thoroughbred history. He was the first foal of Two Rings, a tough and consistent racemare who won nine of her thirty-one races including the Nassau Stakes. Two Rings was great-granddaughter of the broodmare Gallita, whose other descendents included Nadir, Mashaallah and Mark of Esteem.