Hightstown, NJ – Goodwalkspoiled is ready to tee it up in the Kentucky Championship.
A 2-year-old daughter of Pebble Beach whose name is a nod to the oft-quoted description of a round of golf, Goodwalkspoiled will be among nine horses hoping to capture the trophy in Sunday’s (Sept. 20) $400,000 Kentucky Championship Series final for freshman filly pacers at Lexington’s Red Mile.
The Red Mile hosts all eight Kentucky Championship Series finals for pacers and trotters on Sunday, with racing beginning at 5:05 p.m. (EDT). The Kentucky Championship events are races 3 through 10.
Goodwalkspoiled has posted three wins in five races this season and earned $70,000 for driver Kyle Husted and trainer Amy Husted, with Husted Racing LLC sharing ownership of the filly with John Schwarz Jr. She won a leg of the Kentucky Championship Series on Aug. 25 in 1:51 at the Red Mile. On Aug. 4, she won a division of the lower-level Commonwealth Series in 1:50, a mark that is the fastest of the Championship Series finalists and ranks behind only three 2-year-old filly pacers in North America.
She will leave from post 7 on Sunday and is the 9-2 third choice on the morning line.
“We’ve known since training her down that she was wicked fast,” Amy Husted said. “She was a little tricky to get going – she had some attitude issues – but once it clicked, we knew she had the speed. Around March, we knew she was pretty nice. But you could have a nice one, and then everyone else has a lot nicer ones. So, you never know. We didn’t want to get our hopes up. But we knew she was special; for us, anyway.
“I like her spunkiness,” Amy added. “She’s very nice to jog and train, she’s smart, and she takes care of herself – but she has feistiness to her as well.”
Goodwalkspoiled, out of the mare Play Nice, is from the first crop of stallion Pebble Beach, who was a Dan Patch Award winner as a 3-year-old in 2022. The Indiana-based Husteds purchased Goodwalkspoiled, a half-sister to Pennsylvania stakes winner Ain’tplayinnice, for $27,000 at this past October’s Midwest Standardbred Select Yearling Sale.
“We loved watching Pebble Beach race, and Kyle and I always said we thought he would be a really good sire because he was so fast,” Amy said. “We looked at her at the sale, and we fell in love with her. She was big, strong, perfect conformation. We thought she would be out of our price range. Maybe we just got lucky.”
Goodwalkspoiled heads to Sunday’s race off a seventh-place Championship Series finish on Sept. 6, when she led for three-quarters of the race. Her past four starts show a pattern of alternating wins and seventh-place finishes.
“She wins and then she throws a clunker,” Amy said. “Last week, was her clunker. Maybe this will be her good week.”
Amy added about the performances, “The times that she raced below average, she scoped with some mucous. Not anything terrible, just a little sickness. When you have to race as tough as these races, you have to be a hundred percent. We’ve battled a lot of allergy issues with her all year, and I think that just got the best of her.”
Sunday’s $400,000 purse will equal the most lucrative that Husted’s training stable has competed for.
“It’s what we dream about,” Amy said. “Especially with one that we picked out, and broke and trained down. Our partner is great. We’ve had horses together going on six years now, and he’s amazing and very supportive. It would be just so much fun if we could get a little piece of it. It’s definitely what we’ve dreamt about for a long time.”
Kountry Legacy, a daughter of Capt Midnight-Shartin N, is the 5-2 morning-line favorite in the Kentucky Championship Series final for 2-year-old filly pacers. She has four wins and two second-place finishes in seven races this season. She will leave from post 3 with Trace Tetrick driving for trainer Jeff Cullipher.
The 7-2 second choice is My Taylors Swift, who has a win and four seconds in six races. She will go from post 6 with Ronnie Wrenn Jr. in the sulky for trainer Ron Burke.
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