by Greg Peck

Today, trainer Greg Peck reflects on his victory with Muscle Hill in the 84th Hambletonian and his champion trotter’s schedule the rest of the season.

Greg Peck

In the words of Sam McKee, “Operation Hambletonian: Complete.” Now we go on to something else, but with Holiday Road winning the Peter Haughton, you have to think of Operation Hambletonian 2010.

What was touching was all the media coverage, New York Times, I did 20 minutes on WFAN, which has a great listenership and everyone was well wishing and gracious. It felt good because as much as I said that you never know in a horse race, I did have lots of confidence in Muscle Hill and I wanted it to go the way it did. It was really, really something. It was my first Hambletonian and I didn’t want to be saying after it was over, ‘Well, I didn’t win, but I got this experience.’ I felt Muscle Hill deserved it and he got it.

I thought about Troy Sylvester all day on Hambletonian day (recently deceased in an ATV accident).

After the Hambletonian, I heard from Mike White, a high school teacher of mine. He was a great teacher that I had at Memorial High School and he called my mother. I heard from a lot of people from home and I’m still hearing from a lot of people. A lot of people didn’t want to call the day of or the day after, they thought I’d be too busy. I was, but I still would have taken their calls or returned their calls, because I was more than happy to hear from them.

The horse came out of it great. He had a great sleep Saturday night and he was raring to go. Now we’re looking at what to do next. I got a call from Doc Narotsky from Balmoral. We’ll probably go to the American-National (at Balmoral August 29) and the World Trotting Derby (Du Quoin, Illinois, September 5). We’ll have to supplement to the American-National. We didn’t plan on it, but since it worked out the way it did, it’ll be three weeks from Hambletonian Day that he’ll go there and then on to the World Trotting Derby, so it will work out well. I wanted to give him a little space after the Hambletonian.

It did bother me that I couldn’t take him to the Colonial because I very much like Rick Kane, the director of racing at Chester. That’s my home track (Peck lives in a Philadelphia suburb). I would have loved to race him there, but I just couldn’t, because I didn’t want to bring him back in eight days, I didn’t think it was right.

Literally you have the American-National, World Trotting Derby, Canadian Trotting Classic elims and the final one week after another. But then there’s a week off until the Kentucky Futurity. At some point, you’re going to have to race him a little more often and the fall seems like a better time to do it. We’ll certainly cross that bridge when we come to it, but that’s what we have. He’ll have so few starts going into the fall, but hopefully, he’ll still be fresh. He’s keeping his weight on good. He looks like a show horse.

We’ll ship to the Red Mile the first of the week and then qualify him there the week before the American-National. Holiday Road will start in the Simpson at The Red Mile on September 21 and then the Bluegrass and then the International Stallion Stakes. He has nothing between now and then; we’re not going to the Wellwood or the Valley Victory.

They came yesterday to the stable with the Hambletonian trophy and we all got our picture taken, even Major, the stable mascot. He was very stoic in his pictures, he did a great job. Brendan (Peck’s 11-year-old son) got his picture taken, too. Brendan’s become quite a media star himself with Moira (Fanning of the Hambletonian Society) putting him on YouTube and he helped the NBC crew and he had a media pass, too.

I tried very hard to advance a casino at the Meadowlands. The Meadowlands is our Churchill Downs and the Hambletonian is our Kentucky Derby and we really need the Meadowlands.