Gordon Waterstone

Lexington, KY — On Oct. 14 Ponda Warrior took trainer Jay Hochstetler into the Indiana Sires Stakes Super Final winner’s circle for the first time ever and now the colt pacer will be taking the 29-year-old to Canada for the very first time.

Ponda Warrior will start from post eight with driver Scott Zeron in the first of two Breeders Crown eliminations for 3-year-old male pacers on Saturday night (Oct. 22) at Woodbine Mohawk Park. The top-five finishers in each elim (races eight and 10) will advance to the $600,000 Breeders Crown final on Saturday (Oct. 29).

In the $270,000 Indiana Super Final, Dexter Dunn was behind Ponda Warrior for the first time. In that race, Ponda Warrior settled in fifth early after starting from post eight before Dunn moved his charge around the final turn. Rallying from eight lengths back at the :53.1 half, Ponda Warrior roared past the field in the stretch to win by 3-1/4 lengths in 1:49.2, lighting up the toteboard at odds of 10-1.

Following the race in the Harrah’s Hoosier Park winner’s circle, the three-time defending U.S. Driver of the Year Dunn had some complimentary words to Hochstetler.

“(Dunn’s) only comment to me was, ‘This is a real horse, mate!'” said Hochstetler.

In the $270,000 Indiana Super Final, Ponda Warrior roared past the field in the stretch to win by 3-1/4 lengths in 1:49.2. Dean Gillette Photography.

Ponda Warrior was a $37,000 yearling purchase at the 2020 Hoosier Classic Sale by Hochstetler, Amy and Arthur Finkelberg’s Finkelberg Racing and Diana, William and Mark Hunter’s South Of The Tracks Rac Inc. A son of Rockin Image, Ponda Warrior is out of the $392,515-winning American Ideal mare Sweetnsinful, who was owned by Hochstetler’s parents, Connie and Homer Hochstetler, the latter also the trainer.

“I raced his mom with my dad in New York and she was a really good horse, and that’s why we bought him,” noted Hochstetler about the multiple-time winner on the New York Sires Stakes circuit who finished second in the 2013 final for 2-year-old filly pacers. “He looked similar to her, he just had the colt form. He broke awesome and he was one of those that you know is a little bit different from the get-go.”

Ponda Warrior had three wins in nine starts last year at two, earning $116,200 for his connections. Hochstetler said he toyed with the idea of taking Ponda Warrior to last year’s Breeders Crown at The Meadowlands, but after the colt came up with a sub-par performance in the Indiana Super Final, he decided against it.

“I thought about taking him to the Breeders Crown last year but he didn’t race very good in the final so I decided to put him away,” said Hochstetler, who is also the grandson of the late Hall of Famer Doug Ackerman. “He made $116,000 last year and that was as good as I could ask.”

Ponda Warrior wintered at Pinehurst in North Carolina, and his sophomore campaign in 2022 has resulted in four wins and four seconds in 13 starts as he heads to Mohawk Park. The sophomore pacer took his lifetime mark of 1:49.1 in the first Sires Stakes leg at Hoosier Park on May 30 with Jimmy Whittemore driving. Whittemore had driven Ponda Warrior in all 12 of his starts this year before Dunn got the call for the Super Final.

“My owners knew Dexter was going to be there and he’s Dexter Dunn, and he’s kind of like Superman right now the way things are,” explained Hochstetler. “We saw the opportunity to have him and it turned out well. Jimmy (Whittemore) trained him all winter long with my dad and I was fortunate to also have him drive all year.”

Hochstetler said Ponda Warrior has been a dream horse to have in his Hoosier Park-based barn, where he works alongside his father and which consisted of 20 horses for much of the year but is now cut in half with the 10 2-year-olds turned out.

“He is the easiest horse to drive; he’s two fingers,” said Hochstetler. “He could leave in 25 seconds one race and the next race you can take him off just as easy as if he left. He’s really handy and can do whatever he wants. He doesn’t really need a certain trip and we’ve been lucky to have it like that.

“He has the raw speed and talent where he can back it up where he can race against great horses. It’s nice that he doesn’t have to go to the front. He’s not hard to take off and that makes life a lot easier when you are racing against the caliber of horses he races against.”

Ponda Warrior’s 2022 ledger shows $239,400 in earnings, bringing his career total to $355,600. Hochstetler noted the consistency of his pacer this year.

“The year was good and then it got great last weekend,” Hochstetler noted, referring to the Super Final victory. “He was pretty much on the money about every start this year. The only start he didn’t put in a great performance was three starts back (an Indiana Sires Stakes leg on Sept. 16) when he was sick and got tired in the lane. (In a Sires Stakes leg on Oct. 7) he made a break when we were trying to leave hard and he took it a little bit aggressively and took a bad step. He raced great after so it was nothing to worry about. It was just a freak thing.”

Although Hochstetler had hoped Dunn would drive Ponda Warrior in the Breeders Crown elims, when Dunn opted to remain with the Pennsylvania Sires Stakes champ Fourever Boy, Hochstetler turned to Zeron. Also in the field is Pepsi North America Cup winner Pebble Beach, who is three-for-three this year at Mohawk Park.

The field in the second elim includes recent Little Brown Jug and Ohio Sires Stakes champ Bythemissal and Kentucky Sires Stakes victor I Did It Myway.

As for Ponda Warrior starting from post eight, Hochstetler said, “Nobody wants the eight hole, but he had the eight hole last week and it didn’t seem to bother him too much. I think we can work with it. I’m optimistic.”

Hochstetler said he and Ponda Warrior will leave Indiana for Ontario Thursday afternoon (Oct. 20).

“I’m going to give him a blow-out trip first, then feed him lunch, and then head to the Great White North,” said Hochstetler. “I’ve never been to Canada and I got my passport a couple of months ago in anticipation for this.

“This is what we dream of so we’ll see how it works out.”

Complete entries for the Mohawk races are available at this link. Racing begins at 7 p.m. (EDT).