from Harness Racing Communications, a division of the USTA

Freehold, NJ — It’s a long way from Iowa to The Meadowlands, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and not just in miles. Very few horses bred in Iowa have ever competed at the sport’s flagship track, but on Sunday, April 15, Beach Nut Brand will take a stand for the Hawkeye State.

The 5-year-old trotting gelding is having the best season of his career and will be a contender in the $100,000 final of the Su Mac Lad Series at the Meadowlands on April 15. He won the previous leg, on April 1, in 1:54.1, by three-quarters of a length. He was a standout on the Iowa fair circuit, winning 19 of 25 races as a 2- and 3-year-old. He took a mark of 1:53.3 last year, as a 4-year-old, winning a series division at Harrah’s Chester last fall.

Beach Nut Brand was bred by Caroll Huffman of Sigourney, Iowa, who owned him until the summer of 2006, when he was sold to current owners Scott Kurzrok of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and Stable 45 of Happauge, New York for a price in five figures.

“My son, Rick Huffman, and I own and operate a livestock auction and we built our own track at the farm back in ’79,” Huffman said. “Both of his grandpas were in the racehorse business. He picked it up as a little child and started going around the fairs with us to Iowa and Illinois. In the middle and late 1980s, I started going to Kentucky and getting some colts and he trained them here at the farm. We’ve got this Iowa (Sires Stakes) program, so we decided to get our own stud (Branded, a son of the trotter Supergill). We have pacers, but Rick has done a good job with the trotters and likes them and does his own shoeing, training and driving and knows how to set them up.”

The Huffmans breed their own mares to Branded, but they do accept some outside mares for a $1,000 stud fee.

“Mike Cox, who trains in Springfield, Illinois, had some horses for me and told me this stud has the breeding and he’s out of one of Castleton’s (the now closed Castleton Farm) best mares, Castleton Blaze,” Huffman said. “I liked the Supergill bloodline (Branded) and it seemed like it would be a good cross with the Valley Victory line (bloodlines of She’s A Lil Vixen, dam of Beach Nut Brand).

“Rick’s grandpa, Lowell Holzhauser, who went with us to the fairs, always chewed Beechnut (chewing tobacco) and I said I was going to name a horse after him, so that’s where I came up with the name. He just passed away this last year, but he got to see him race as a 2- and 3-year-old in Iowa. He’s a very strong classy colt. Rick always called him ‘Mushroom’ because the day he was born, he was out mushroom hunting and he came in and this colt was born. We’d sold the mare (She’s A Lil Vixen). We sold her before he was going into his 2-year-old year; we haven’t been able to locate her since. But I bought a couple Mr Vic mares; we’re going to try to get a Beach Nut Woman or a Beach Nut something.”

Beach Nut Brand acted like a nice horse all along, Huffman said.

“Right from the start, he kept getting classier and classier. We have the small track here at the farm and when he got training down, Rick said, ‘I believe he’s going to be one of the faster colts I’ve trained.’ It’s a third of a mile (track) and he said, ‘Man, can he get around that track handy,’ he never opened him up or anything.”

The horse was sold last summer to his current connections.

“Jake Huff came out here from New York and we told him all about him; he trains horses for Eugene Kurzrock,” said Huffman. “That day it was kind of tacky and muddy and he couldn’t go much with him, but he relied a lot on our word. I give Rick all the credit in the world, he brought him along.”