by Ken Weingartner, Harness Racing Communications

Ken Weingartner

Freehold, NJ — Mach It So was a last-minute addition to the Little Brown Jug field, but trainer Nifty Norman thinks the gelding fits in nicely among the 19 horses entered in Thursday’s pacing classic.

Held at the Delaware County Fair in central Ohio, the $552,551 Little Brown Jug is the second jewel in the Pacing Triple Crown and requires a horse to win twice to be declared the champion.

The top three finishers from three elimination heats advance to the second heat. If a first-round winner also wins the second heat, he is declared the winner. If another horse wins, then a four-horse race-off is held to determine the winner. The last race-off was in 2000, when Astreos defeated Gallo Blue Chip, George Scooter and Profita.

New Image Media photo

Mach It So enters the Little Brown Jug with $336,751 in season’s earnings on his resume.

Mach It So, who has won eight of 12 races this year and earned $336,751 for owner Bamond Racing, is in the second of the three first-heat divisions. He will start from post two with driver Scott Zeron and is the 4-1 second choice on the morning line, behind Lucan Hanover from the stable of trainer Casie Coleman. Incidentally, the 24-year-old Zeron last year became the youngest driver to win the Jug, with Coleman-trained Michael’s Power.

“He’s a good little horse,” Norman said about Mach It So. “He won’t get embarrassed. I think he fits in there pretty good. It helps when you draw inside like that. He’s not the best horse in there, but I think he’s good enough to get in the final and good enough to get a check in the final.

“You need a lot of luck in that race, it doesn’t matter how good a horse you’ve got. The best horse doesn’t always win.”

Jeffrey Bamond and his son Jeffrey Jr. purchased Mach It So in a private sale last September. Mach It So, a son of Mach Three-Beach Dancer, is a half-brother to 2009 Woodrow Wilson Pace winner Windfall Blue Chip.

Originally, the connections were going to skip the Little Brown Jug, but reconsidered when it was announced that top contenders Captaintreacherous and Sunshine Beach would bypass the race. Captaintreacherous, the defending Pacer of the Year who has won seven of eight races this year, captured the first jewel in the Triple Crown, the Cane Pace, on Sept. 2.

Mach It So is the leader in points in the Ontario Sire Stakes Gold Series for 3-year-old male pacers, where he is 4-for-4 this season, and Norman wanted the horse to race prior to the Sept. 28 Super Final.

“We weren’t intending on going, but then a couple (horses) dropped out — like Captaintreacherous and Sunshine Beach — and the owners like to go to the race, so I said let’s go,” Norman said. “We’ve got to race him somewhere, so we might as well race him for $500,000.”

In his most recent start, Sept. 7, Mach It So was fourth in a division of the Simcoe Stakes at Mohawk Racetrack. Mach It So was in last place on the final turn, more than nine lengths from the front, but came home in :26 to finish three lengths from winner Fool Me Once.

“He was really good,” Norman said. “He just got a little bit held up, his cover wasn’t that great, but the horse himself was very good. He finished up really strong.”

Norman doesn’t anticipate Mach It So having difficulty getting around Delaware’s half-mile oval. On Aug. 28 in a sire stakes event, Mach It So won at half-mile Grand River Raceway in a track-record 1:51.4.

“He can get away from the gate good when you want him to,” Norman said. “I think he’ll be fine.”

Right Touch hopes to feel right at home in Jug

Delaware, Ohio, is almost home for 3-year-old pacer Right Touch. The gelded son of Always A Virgin-Touch Of Bogart was born and raised just 45 minutes east of the track, in Mount Vernon, Ohio, at the farm of his breeder and co-owner, Carolyn Brechler, and the family’s Knox Services Inc.

Linscott Photography

Indiana Sire Stakes champion Right Touch has career earnings of $448,404.

Right Touch has post four in the first of three Little Brown preliminary heats at odds of 6-1. He’s coming off two straight wins, including a career-best 1:50.1 in the $200,000 Indiana Sire Stakes championship at Hoosier Park on Sept. 11, after four consecutive second-place efforts.

He has five wins in 12 starts this year and career earnings of $448,404, made primarily in Indiana-bred company. Vegas Vacation, trained by Casie Coleman, is the 2-1 favorite in his Jug heat, followed by Jimmy Takter’s Rockin Amadeus, who won last year’s Breeders Crown for 2-year-old male pacers.

“We’ll find out Thursday if he’s up to it, but we’re all Buckeyes that own him so that’s something you always look forward to — the Jug,” said trainer Ray Paver, a Columbus native who is part of the ownership group, along with Circleville’s John Rhoads, Jr.

“We don’t know if we’ll ever have another chance to get to it, so we might as well put him in.”

Paver says Right Touch’s strengths include his diverse racing style.

“You can really race him any way, but he’s actually better coming off cover,” Paver said. “He explodes coming out of a hole so I’m hoping he has one of those :25.4 quarters (his last quarter in a second-place finish at Hoosier on Aug. 21) on Thursday.

“He races any way you can, it doesn’t matter to him if he’s on the front or coming from behind or first up. He likes looking at a horse, so I just play it by ear and see what happens when the gate folds.”

Paver will have to be on the lookout for what other horses do in the race, but beforehand, it’s a different type of horse power he’ll have to be alert for.

“He doesn’t like tractors,” Paver said. “He goes to the outside fence and wants to buck and kick by them.”