2012 Schedule Released

I’ve always liked the comparison of owning a race horse(s) to owning a sports franchise. As a matter of fact, think that is how I first described horse ownership in this blog when we purchased our most important on field talent In Over My Head. It was just over 3 years ago that Greg and I had the highest bid at the Meadowlands winter sale for what seemed like an eternity before the gavel crashed down and the auctioneer belted out a classic “SOLD!”. Trust me, it was just like you’d see in the movies (with the rather large exception that we had to go into the sales office and make an actual check afterward…).

One place where a horse franchise differs from a regular franchise is your ability to set your own schedule. It is something that I personally enjoy and allows me to spend lots of time playing with dates and numbers in spreadsheets (I love spreadsheets) and it is also something that can be a total waste of time for any number of reasons. Unlike a team who will play on a certain day regardless of what happens to the team members, a horse racing schedule is 100% dependant on the horse. And with no ‘backup’ to step in and take his or her place large chunks of a schedule can be changed or totally canceled based on injury, sickness etc.

We’ve had a few opportunities to make a race schedule for Mo. Some have gone almost exactly to plan and some went over like the Hindenburg. Here is a quick trip down memory lane:

2009:
o Plan: Race him at the Meadowlands in January and February, give him a break, pay him into some mid level stakes races and finish the year going after a couple of ‘slot machine’ level stakes events back in Chicago.
o Result: He raced well at the Meadowlands and it was hard to quit, but we stuck to our guns and gave him a nice break. He had mixed results in the mid level stakes events (won in Springifeld, 2nd in DuQuion and a leg of the Pennsylvania Sire Series) and hit triple 7s by winning the Windy City Pace at the end of the year.
o Scheduling Grade: I think that was a clear “A”

2010:
o Plan: Start the season at the Meadowlands, race through the spring, take a break, then focus on high level races out east with a target at a few stakes races.
o Result: It started well. 2 wins in 2 starts before suffering a potential career ending injury.
o Scheduling Grade: That injury was bad and nearly ended it all. While not our fault, we get an “F”

2011:
o Plan: We didn’t do too much planning. The only schedule we had was to somehow make it back to the races and find the winners circle again.
o Result: We thought it was over 3 or 4 times, but somehow we made it back. It wasn’t pretty early (7th, 5th, 7th), but old Mo returned and finished the year going win, win, third and a fourth.
o Grade: Feels like another ‘A’ to me

This brings us to 2012 and another chance at a more traditional schedule (as opposed to last year). We have high hopes for a great year as we think he really proved he still has ‘it’, but we aren’t getting too ahead of ourselves. Step one is to start the process of training Mo into racing shape and that process will began late last week. We expect it will take about 6 weeks to get there, which puts his return to the track sometime in early March. After some good discussions, we’ve also decided to keep him in Chicago for the start of the season and will test the waters out east if and when he shows that he’s ready.

In summary, the season could end up looking like this:

- Now until early March – get into race shape
- March through May/ June – Race in Chicago
- May/ June – August – Potentially head out to the Big M to chase bigger purses and see if he can handle some tougher competition.
- September – November/ December – Race back in Chicago

The good thing is we should have lots of opportunities to see him race in Chicago and could even take a trip out east to watch him there. We are also kicking around the idea of making him eligible to a couple of big events for two reason: (1) it would be fun and (2) if he is racing like his old self, it would be extra fun to give him the chance to take on some of the best and see what he can do. The issue is those races are expensive, extremely difficult and you must make payments in the spring even though the races aren’t until summer/ fall. There is definitely an element of risk associated with doing that…especially with a horse like In Over My Head. Having that said, it has worked quite well for us in the past (see the Windy City Pace) and we can always choose to not race him in any event if we don’t think he is up for it when the time comes. We will see. We have until February 15th to decide and will have to talk to the Butenschoens about it first.

So there you have it, the 2012 In Over My Head schedule. As we have all learned, nothing horse racing related is written in stone (more like carved into a block of ice sitting outside on a summer day), but it is a lot of fun to think about the near future…especially with Mo. We are hoping 2012 will be a year with a lot of camaraderie and a lot of fun at the track. Keep checking in for updates.

Let’s go Mo!