by Greg Peck

Editor’s Note: Greg Peck, trainer of Muscle Hill, the 2008 Dan Patch Award winner as the sport’s top freshman trotting colt and the early season favorite for this year’s Hambletonian, will be offering his insights into the colt’s 2009 campaign in this exclusive blog on the USTA Web site.

Greg Peck

As the 3-year-old trotting colts get into the heart of the season, it strikes me that this is a stellar 3-year-old crop of trotters, it really is. I have never seen this many. The other night (on the Meadowlands simulcast program), I talked about four and there’s probably another three or four that I didn’t mention, because there’s only so much time.

I am very aware of the competition. Muscle Hill has skills and the tools he can use to be at his best, but so do others. I just haven’t seen it that way in a long time. The other day Hollywood (Bob) Heyden mentioned the year where we had Continentalvictory, Act Of Grace and Lindy Lane. I can name seven or eight horses that might have comparable talent this year. It’s a bumper crop. Two of the three that Heyden mentioned are fillies. This year, there are many robust colts — it’s a concentrated talent pool.

In the years that the Hambo was won by a relatively unknown horse, it seems like it wasn’t in a year when there was such a stamped favorite and such a league of talent. If you look at the last two years, Dewey and Donato were stamped as the favorite off their 2-year-old year, the same as Muscle Hill is now. They did it and I have to hope for the old adage that good things come in threes.

Bob Heyden, shortly after Muscle Hill won the Breeders Crown, said something to the effect that only a small percentage of the winter book favorites came back to be the 3-year-old of the year. My impression of that is that they might not have raced as consistently for as long as Muscle Hill did (at two).

USTA/Mark Hall photo

Muscle Hill will be racing this Saturday night in the $200,000 New Jersey Sire Stakes final at The Meadowlands.

The other thing about this division — all of the favorites have come back good, based on their qualifiers, namely Explosive Matter and Federal Flex. You don’t often see that in a division either. If you look at the 3-year-old pacing colt division, the big favorites, Nebupanezzar and Major In Art, are not going to be back until later.

Aside from horses that were fairly prominent at three, you have new faces, like Encore Encore, who’s won in :53 at the Meadows, Top Chef, 1:54 and a piece, Keystone Activator, who’s gone fast as well. Then you have Mr Cantab, who wasn’t on the radar screen because of a limited amount of starts. So that’s a lot of horses.

In the pacing colt division, it might happen that you have multiple horses able to make a big impression, but it hasn’t happened yet. Two of the three haven’t come back and while there might be somebody on the horizon that’s going to threaten Well Said, I haven’t seen it yet. We might see it with the Burlington, Rooney and New Jersey Classic coming up on Saturday, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Bill O’Donnell, when he was driving Nihilator, said a lot of people thought the division was very strong; but with perspective, the competition had to be more focused on him than anyone else. In this case, the same might be said about Muscle Hill. As respectful as I am about the competition, the other competitors are probably respectful of Muscle Hill.

Muscle Hill is now in the full swing of the season and aside from his work on the track, he’s not turned out at all. He was turned out for 30 days when he was on hiatus at Southwind Farm over the winter. When he came back, we had a big paddock here for him at White Birch Farm, so he was jogged and then turned out. But once he came in for serious training camp, I decided not to turn him out, because they can get hurt when they’re turned out. He’s fine with it, it was the same last year.

He is his own best asset, he has good manners on and off the track.

Sylvia Hovde, his groom, is really vigilant about his care, takes great care of him. Molly Norbye, too and Enrico Robinson, who took care of him in Lexington and is on my staff now, they all look out for him.

A lot of horses go to The Meadowlands and get worked up because they know they’re going to race. Muscle Hill yawns in the paddock after he warms up. He did it on Breeders Crown night. When he goes to the racetrack you almost literally just push a button to get him to do what you want. If he was a piece of technology, he’d be considered very user friendly. You just really have to turn the switch.

Our stable’s other entry in the Sire Stakes final is My Back Pages and he’s come along nicely. He’s a big strong, European kind of horse. On the sire’s side you have Revenue and on the dam’s side you have Balanced Image and they were always big, hard knocking, almost European style horses. They really seem to be able to go the distance. He’s a good partner for Muscle Hill to have, they train together and Saturday night will be the first time they’ll race together.