by Rich Fisher for the USTA

Ray Schnittker and Ron Kelkenberg have won some big stakes races before, but the longtime partners never experienced the kind of exhilaration within an hour that they felt Saturday.

The two both own part of A Rod, Frank The Hands and Tuffofthetoughest, with Schnittker doing much of the driving and his stable’s trainer, Paul Doherty, handling the conditioning. A Rod and Frank The Hands finished 1-2 in the $166,500 Dexter Cup at Freehold Raceway while Tuffofthetoughest won his Max Hempt Memorial elimination at Pocono Downs.

“We’ve won the Dexter four times, so we’ve had big stake races, but not like that, and not as impressive as they looked,” said Schnittker, who missed the Dexter Cup because he was driving Tuffofthetoughest at Pocono Downs. “A Rod made a three-wide move on the last turn and Frank came from way back. That’s why we’re in the game.

“(A Rod) was three deep on that last turn. He could have been a rat, but he turned into a horse. You can take him to water, but they’ve got to want to fight a little bit.”

A lack of fight was something that dogged A Rod last year. In fact, until several weeks ago he was not even going to compete in the Dexter Cup. Then, on April 26, he won a race from post eight at Pocono Downs, which launched his current three-race win streak.

For the year, A Rod, who was driven by George Brennan, has won four of nine starts and $106,285. In addition to Schnittker and Kelkenberg, he is owned by Stephen Demeter and Earl Scheelar.

“He’s a gelding, we cut him at the end of last year, and his attitude got a lot better,” Schnittker said. “When we raced him at the Meadowlands [in March] we didn’t think he was good enough. But we took him to Pocono, and he won a good trip.

“He raced super, and I really thought he had a chance after watching that race. I was talking to (driver) George Brennan on Thursday at the Meadowlands, and he thought he had a good chance at the Dexter. He was a nice surprise. I didn’t think he was that type of a horse.”

A Rod, who is not eligible for the Hambletonian, will race in the New Jersey Sires Stakes.

“I don’t think he’s in the class of the good ones,” Schnittker said. “But he should make a good living there in the Sire Stakes at Freehold.”

A Rod beat out stablemate Frank the Hands, who coming into the year was considered a bigger threat to win the Dexter Cup. In fact, Doherty recently said that A Rod was originally considered the stable’s third-best contender behind Frank The Hands and Matchstick Man, who missed reaching the Dexter final after going off stride in his elimination.

Schnittker had driven Frank The Hands in all of his starts this year, but turned over the lines to Jeff Gregory for the Dexter Cup final.

“He raced real well; I thought he had a lot of pop,” Schnittker said. “If you reversed post positions [with A Rod] he would have won the race.”

Either way, it was a big day for Schnittker and Kelkenberg, who races under the stable name of Kelk’s Inc. Kelkenberg, who is retired from General Motors, met Schnittker in 1981 and the two have been together ever since.

“He was ecstatic,” Schnittker said. “We’ve been partners a long, long time, and that’s about the happiest I’ve seen him. We’ve won a lot of stake races, but within a half hour all the races went off, and it was really something.”

“In harness racing, you don’t get those kinds of days. You have days where all three will run, but not days where all three will win.”