Well Said to make 2009 debut on Wednesday
June 1, 2009,by Ken Weingartner, Harness Racing Communications
Ken Weingartner
Freehold, NJ — Last season’s Breeders Crown champion 2-year-old male pacer, Well Said, will make his first start of 2009 on Wednesday (June 3) in a non-stakes race at Harrah’s Chester Casino & Racetrack.
Last year, Well Said won four of 12 races and earned $586,688. In addition to the Breeders Crown, at the Meadowlands, the colt won a division of the Champlain Stakes and was second in a division of the Nassagaweya, both at Mohawk Racetrack in Canada.
Trainer Steve Elliott prepped Well Said with three qualifiers. The colt won the most recent, on May 21 at the Meadowlands, in 1:50.3 (with a :26.3 final quarter-mile). Only four 3-year-old pacers have won races in faster times this year.
“I’m looking forward to having a great year with that colt,” said driver Ron Pierce, who was in the sulky for 10 of Well Said’s starts last season. “We qualified him well within himself. I was really happy. He felt as good as he looked, if not better. He was very impressive. He still has that wicked step to him.”
Well Said (Western Hanover-Must See) finished on-the-board in nine of 12 races last season. His only missteps — literally — came as he went off stride in his first career start, when he lost a shoe in a division of the Reynolds Stakes at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, and in the final of the Governor’s Cup at Woodbine, when he made a break near the half-mile point.
“I’m still going to have to be careful with him,” Pierce said. “When you tip him out of a hole to go, he’s one of those horses that want to accelerate faster than the track can keep up with them. He gets to spinning his tires, like he did when he made the break in the Governor’s Cup. He slipped and made a break. He wants to come out of that hole 1,000 (mph). I’m going to have to take a big hold of him every time I take him out.”
Well Said, who is owned by Jeff Snyder and Lothlorien, was third in earnings last season among 3-year-old male pacers. The two horses above him — Nebupanezzar and Major In Art — will be sidelined by injuries for the next several months.
“I was coming into the year expecting (Well Said) to be right there with the top, anyway, with the talent he showed last year,” Pierce said. “He just had a lot of bad luck.”