by Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association
Bill Zendt has trained horses for Russell Loudon for three decades. During that time, they have never brought a horse to the Little Brown Jug.
Until Thursday, that is, when Finnegan Hanover will go behind the gate in the opening division of the first heat.
“Russell’s from Ohio and he’s always wanted to race in the Jug,” said Zendt, who co-owns the horse with Loudon. “He’s 75-years-old and figured if he’s ever going to do it, it might as well be now with Finnegan Hanover. It just shows how tough it is to have a horse to get here. It’s $6,000 (for the starting fee) so you better be able to go a bit.”
Zendt also will have You Rock in the third division. You Rock is owned by Zendt, Jim Webb, Jr., and Bob Huntsinger, all of western Pennsylvania. The 55-year-old Zendt’s only previous Jug starter was Keystone Romeo, who finished fourth in his first heat and failed to advance to the second heat in 1998.
Finnegan Hanover has one win in 16 starts this year and has earned $38,046. He is coming off a fourth place finish in the Jug Preview on September 11 at Scioto Downs.
“I just call him a hard-luck colt,” Zendt said. “He’s paced some nice miles, but he can’t make his own trip like You Rock can. He raced real well in the Cleveland Classic (finishing third on August 21). He got interfered with a little bit, but raced real good.”
You Rock finished seventh in his Jug Preview division, but started from post seven and got parked on the outside for the majority of the mile. He won his two starts prior to the Jug Preview, including a stakes record victory (1:501) in the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes Final on September 4 at the Meadows.
“He’s been real sharp,” said Zendt, who is probably best known for training Always Cam, the winner of the 2002 Jugette and this year’s Breeders Crown Mare Pace. “I think you can throw out the Jug Preview. He hasn’t beat the top horses yet, but he’s been good. I think he’s got a shot at it.”
Finnegan Hanover drew the rail and is 15-1 on the morning line in the opening division, and You Rock will start from post six and is 10-1 on the line in the third elimination division.
Kafka’s getting smarter
Fortunately for Kafka Hanover, brains don’t matter on the racetrack.
Well, not much anyway.
Trainer Peter Blood, one of the horse’s minority partners, said Kafka Hanover was “a real idiot at first,” but that hasn’t kept the horse from winning five of 22 starts and $79,307 this year. Kafka Hanover will compete Thursday in the Little Brown Jug, and will race in the third division of the opening heat. He will start from post position four and is 8-1 on the morning line.
Blood, who is based at Pompano Park, trained Kafka Hanover until May of this year, and then the horse shipped north and was turned over to driver Stephen Smith and trainer Karen Garland. Blood was looking for a yearling out of the mare Krafty Kim because of the success he had with two of her other horses, Klingon Hanover (third in the 2001 Meadowlands Pace and a career winner of $709,677) and Kanwin Hanover, when he settled upon Kafka Hanover.
“He was a real idiot at first, a tough horse to get going,” Blood said. “He was just a hard horse to get gaited. You could see periods where he had some ability, where he was very light on his feet and athletic. So we persevered. To this day when he scores down, he canters. He’ll pace intermittently while scoring, but he canters. People look at me and ask how I can race a lame horse. I tell them that he’s not lame, that’s just what he does. He’s been doing better lately; I think he’s getting an idea.”
Kafka Hanover won four straight starts before finishing fifth in the Kentucky Sired Summer Championship on September 11 at the Red Mile. His top win came on August 14 at the Red Mile in the Kentucky Summer Championship.
“He had a horrible trip (in the Kentucky-Sired Summer Championship),” Blood said. “He was first-over in a half (-mile) of :543. We thought if he wasn’t first or second we wouldn’t go to the Jug. But we thought he had an excuse. I’ve never owned a horse in the Jug. I’m 60-years-old now, so how many times do you get to have a piece of a horse like this? We want to participate.”
Blood is part of Magic Partners LLC Two, which owns Kafka Hanover. Gary Piontkowski, the president and CEO of Plainridge Racecourse in Plainville, Mass. leads the group. It also includes Robert Gopen, Mary O’Donnell, Robert Rosenheim, and Richard Tuch.
Garland, 39, and Smith, 43, have had success with Garden Spot, Sugar Trader, and Glide About. In 2002 they won the $410,000 Valley Victory with Garden Spot and the $225,000 Matron Stakes with Sugar Trader.
Smith was born in Boston. He first made a name for himself with Shady Character, who earned $155,336 as a 2-year-old and $1.07 million the next year for trainer Brett Pelling.
Blissed Out is all business
Sara Waddon has had Blissed Out for only a few weeks, but she’s learned the 3-year-old colt is all business.
“He can be a little tough some days,” said Waddon, who is the caretaker of Blissed Out for trainer Richard Banca. “He’s got a lot of personality, but he’s not one of those horses that wants to be your friend. He’s not mean; he just likes his space.”
Waddon, a 25-year-old from Hamilton, Ont., has been working in harness racing for about five years. She previously worked with show horses and got her Standardbred trainer’s license last year.
“I’ve always worked with horses and I love doing it,” Waddon said. “I met (owner-trainer) Eddie Howard and he got me started with Standardbreds. I’d like to get some horses and go from there. It would probably be hard to go on my own at first, but I really enjoy it.”
Blissed Out drew post position one and is the 9-5 favorite in the third division of the opening heat for Thursday’s Little Brown Jug. His heat also includes Meadowlands Pace winner Holborn Hanover, Santastic’s Pan, and The Preacher Pan.
Waddon, whose past horses have included Lifetime Memories and Pinnacle, also is looking after Banca’s Jug hopeful Rare Jewel. A son of Artiscape, Rare Jewel will start from post position six in the first division of opening heat and is 6-1 on the morning line.
A son of 1999 Triple Crown winner Blissfull Hall, Blissed Out has won seven of 23 starts and has earned $131,950 this year. In his most recent race, Blissed Out set a track record at Mohawk while winning a division of the Simcoe by nearly eight lengths over Armbro Balmoral.
It was his first and only start for Banca, who had bought the colt for $75,000 from Bob Burgess and Karin Olsson-Burgess and then sold him for $250,000 to Tony Chiaravalle after the Simcoe Stakes. Banca still trains the horse.
“This is nice, it’s an experience,” said Waddon, who is making her first trip to the Jug. “It would be great to win, that’s what you work all year for. It’s pretty cool here with the fair going on; you don’t get that in Canada. The Jug Barn is beautiful; the gardens inside are gorgeous. It’s definitely an experience.”
Winning in heats may not give Timesareachanging an advantage
Timesareachanging proved he can survive heat racing by winning the Coors Delvin Miller Adios in consecutive heats this past August 14 at the Meadows, but trainer Brett Pelling isn’t sure that’s an advantage as he prepares the gelding for Thursday’s $571,500 Little Brown Jug at the Delaware County Fair in Ohio.
“The fact he’s done it before probably means he has a little more wear and tear on him,” Pelling said. “It might be a little disadvantage, but it lets us have faith in him that he can come back strong in a second heat. We kind of knew that about him anyway; he’s a very brave horse.”
Twenty-four horses entered the Little Brown Jug — the third jewel in the Pacing Triple Crown — which requires a horse to win two heats to be declared the winner. The top three finishers in each of three first-heat divisions will return for the second heat. If a first heat winner fails to win the second heat the second heat victor will join the three first heat winners in a race-off.
In addition to winning the Adios, Timesareachanging finished in a dead heat with stablemate Western Terror and won the Cane Pace and finished second in the Messenger Stakes and the Meadowlands Pace. Western Terror is the favorite in the first division of the first Jug heat, and Blissed Out, who set the track record of 1:484 at Mohawk Racetrack when he won on September 11, is the favorite in the third.
Timesareachanging, driven by recently elected Hall of Famer Ron Pierce, has won seven of 14 starts and has earned $780,220 this year. Western Terror, also trained by Pelling, has won two of 13 races and $322,492.
Both horses are owned by Perfect World Enterprises and are the only Jug participants to have raced in the finals of the first two legs of the Triple Crown, the Cane Pace on Labor Day at Freehold Raceway and the Messenger Stakes on September 14 at Harrington. The Triple Crown is being completed over a span of just 17 days.
“It takes a pretty good horse to survive that,” Pelling said. “Western Terror is thriving; the racing seems to be helping him a lot. He didn’t race as hard as Timesareachanging at the Meadowlands this summer and he’s coming into his own.”
Metropolitan, who won the Messenger Stakes by one length over Timesareachanging and Western Terror, drew post position eight in the second division of the opening heat.
Winters-Barker celebrating 25 years
Little Brown Jug outrider Diane Winters-Barker, on her chestnut Quarter Horse Booger and wearing a color coordinate outfit, is marking 25 years as the outrider at the Jug. A native and resident of Delaware, Ohio she’s following in a family tradition.
“My cousin, Marilyn Evans, had this job before me (for 15 years),” recalled Winters-Barker. “I was in the paddock with her, brushing her horse’s (Tomahawk) mane and tail. She had a silver saddle; I’d take off from school to help her and I was her groom. It was a lifelong dream to do this. I thought it was an honorable job. Glamorous, yes, but honorable.”
Winters-Barker started serving as outrider in 1980, but her “day” job doesn’t involve horses.
“I was with the Ohio Department of Transportation for 30 years, starting as a clerk, and I ended up as an administrative assistant,” she said. “I supervised about 200 people.”
Among the Jug days that stand out in Winters-Barker’s quarter century in the saddle is “the year John and I got married, 1995.”
That was the year Diane Winters became Diane Winters-Barker, when she married John Barker, then the track superintendent. The two married on horseback in the winner’s circle prior to the day’s card, “and then we had the accident that year with Jody’s Cam falling down. He fell over in the slop on the east side of the racetrack, when he went to get up, the bike turned over and he came up without his bridle on, just a head halter.
It took both Pat (Coffee, another outrider) and I to squeeze him in and get him stopped. She took hold of him because she had the smaller horse and could get closer and I got in front of him with the red horse (Booger) and just slowed him down until he stopped. He ran in to the back of me twice, but we just kept slowing him down to keep him safe. That was my honeymoon,” she laughed.
Eight of 10 horses Winters-Barker has used have been homebreds, and she’s branched out a bit in the past to other outriding jobs.
“I’d work here for a week and then go to Lexington (Kentucky, to the Red Mile) for two weeks, work there and I’d go back to my real job totally refreshed.”
Her current horse, Booger, not only has a nose for a horse, but cows as well as he’s used in cutting, in which horse and rider “cut” a single, marked cow out of a herd.
Winters-Barker has served the fair beyond just the racetrack as a fair board member and co-chair of the Delaware All Horse Parade since its inception 19 years ago. The parade is the biggest all-horse parade east of the Mississippi.
“We fluctuate between 540 and 570 (horses). I think we want to go for 1,000,” she laughs. “The crowd is estimated at 40,000 to 50,000 people and it’s always the Sunday before the fair starts. By the second year it got too big to have on the Sunday of fair week.”
Winters-Barker and her co-outriders are always identically attired, with a different outfit, often sparkly and patriotic, each day of racing. The ensembles are custom made by “my wonderful sister, Debbie Winters-Burgundy,” she said. “She’s very talented, an excellent, excellent seamstress. I pick out the fabric and she fixes it.”
One thing that Debbie has never had to do is change the size pattern she works with. For 25 years, Winters-Barker has been the same weight, since she started outriding, light enough to be a Thoroughbred jockey (110 pounds).
Not even a pound more?
“Not an ounce,” she said.
Scots to present trophy
Owners of the nine Little Brown Jug finalists will receive a tasty bonus on Thursday afternoon, from the Harness Racing Club of Scotland.
Four members of the Club, hailing from Stirling, Scotland, will present a bottle of Glenrothes 20-year-old single malt whiskey and engraved commemorative glasses and plaques in ceremonies in the Jug Barn after the third elimination heat.
The glasses are engraved “In Friendship.”