by Ellen Harvey, Harness Racing Communications, a division of the USTA

Freehold, NJ — The 3-year-old trotting colt Crazed made folks sit up and take notice with a 9-1/4 length victory in a modest $15,000 race at The Meadowlands on July 17. His winning time of 1:52.4 would have been fast enough to win six of the last eight Hambletonians.

For trainer Frank Antonacci, Jr., the mile answered many questions.

USTA/Ken Weingartner photo

Frank Antonacci, Jr. has entered Crazed in the Hambletonian.

“I was very happy with him, very happy,” said Antonacci. “When Tim (Tetrick) drove him on July 3 (to a win in 1:55.1), he said to me, ‘I don’t know if he’s up to :52 yet, but he might be by the end of the month.’ I said if he’s ready by the end of the month, that would be good timing.”

The son of Credit Winner-May Lou Hall is now three for four this year.

“We’ve been racing him off the pace, that was kind of by design,” said Antonacci. “We’ve been letting him progress on his own that way, see where he is by Hambo time and it looks like he’s coming around at the right time.”

As of Monday afternoon, Antonacci had already entered the colt in the Hambletonian, to be contested on August 2 at The Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey.

Crazed had one win in five starts as a 2-year-old, his sole victory coming in a maiden event at Vernon Downs in 1:58.1.

“Last year he got started late. I qualified once in Lexington and then raced him once at Vernon. Then I threw him right into the Matron and Breeders Crown (he failed to qualify for the Matron final and was seventh in the Crown final). He got bad posts in both of them and kind of never had a chance in either of those two races.

“This year we tried to do a little bit differently, let him mature on his own. He really wasn’t seasoned like everybody else was. When you have a really dominant horse like Deweycheatumnhowe, if you try to chase him around from the beginning of the year, you’re in big trouble.”

Antonacci says the colt does not live up to his name.

USTA/Mark Hall photo

Crazed has won four of his nine lifetime starts, with earnings of $28,016.

“He’s got a great personality, but he’s an escape artist,” he laughed. “He lets himself out of the stall all the time, so that’s always a challenge. He just plays with the snaps and gets them to open eventually. He hadn’t done it in a while, he did it a couple times in Florida and he did it here fairly recently. He doesn’t do much, just lets himself out and goes and eats grass. He doesn’t cause too much trouble.”

Antonacci has a variety of strategies in place to keep Crazed in his stall.

“We have a bungee here and a bungee there and a couple different snaps. He’s not going anywhere right now.”

Antonacci took an unusual path to training a Hambletonian contender. He’s a member of the class of 2005 at Boston College, with a degree in Finance and Marketing.

“I was supposed to go work on Wall Street but I changed my mind,” he laughed. “I think for me, it was the best thing to do, it leaves a lot of options open. You’re never going to go to college and say that was a waste of time. It’s going to help you one way or another. You learn to make relationships with people in other businesses that might want to own horses at some time. I don’t think anyone’s going to say a guy’s too educated.”

Crazed is owned by the Antonacci family’s Lindy Racing Stable along with partners Gary and Ellen Hoffman and Robert Rudolph. He was a $33,000 yearling purchase at the Standardbred Horse Sale in Pennsylvania.

“Gary has owned horses on and off for a lot of years. He won the Hambletonian (in 1986) with Nuclear Kosmos and (trainer) Per Henriksen,” says Antonacci. “He retired from the commodities exchange a couple years ago and wanted to get back in with the horses and got in touch with us to get a piece of a couple of yearlings. Crazed was the first one he was in partnership again with us. He bought a piece of the full sister to Crazed, Gift Card, who’s a 2-year-old and just qualified.”

Robert Rudolph is another veteran owner, says Antonacci.

USTA/Ken Weingartner photo

Horses trained by the 24-year-old Antonacci have posted 37 wins and earnings of $612,320.

“Rudolph is another guy who’s owned horses for 20 plus years,” he said. “He owns a company called Rudco that makes garbage containers and a lot of equipment for the garbage business, so we know him through the family business (the Antonaccis own a waste disposal business). I saw him at a waste convention a couple years ago, he’s a big harness fan and he said if you go to the sale and find something interesting, I’d be interested in being your partner. He’s having a really good time with it, he was there his (Crazed’s) last couple of starts and says he’s been having a blast.”

Antonacci got a major assist from his father, Frank Antonacci, Sr., in selecting Crazed as a yearling.

“His pedigree is pretty interesting, it goes back to Scotch Hill and through different lines goes down to Victory Dream (1994 Hambletonian winner) and Noble Victory. It’s actually a different branch of a pretty strong family. When my father showed me the (catalog) page in Harrisburg, my initial reaction was that it was short on black type (stakes winners) for us, but he knew every horse on the page and a lot of that family had been exported to Italy and had been producing really good horses over there.”

Crazed’s full sister, Gift Card, sold for $115,000 as a yearling and is now in the Antonacci stable, but she’s not a better-looking individual than her $33,000 brother, says Antonacci.

“He’s about as sharp-looking a horse as you’re going to see. Just a beautiful animal,” he notes. “She’s maybe just a little longer and she is going to be bigger. (At the time she sold), Crazed had just won and he was in to go in the Matron, he looked like he was going to be a stakes horse. Couple that with her being a Credit Winner and she was a good-looking filly herself.”

Antonacci trains 27 head at the family farm outside Hartford, Conn. He is assisted by native Italian Domenico Cecere and 20-year Lindy Farm employee Anselmo Osorio along with his younger brothers, Chris, a student at Duke University, and Philip, a high schooler.