It has now been a week and two days since In Over My Head put up that big mile at the Meadowlands, good for a third place finish in the Junior Trendsetter. Since that day, he has earned a one month, all expense paid (by my uncle and I) vacation to a nice farm in New Jersey. He spends his days running around a paddock and nights in a nice heated stall in the barn. If we could all be so lucky. He's also being fed a lot to make sure he will be ready to face the rigors of a long racing season. We will begin training him again in late March and will have him ready to qualify in mid May.
So what am I going to write about until then? Honestly, I'm not sure. I have to do something to keep my 3 readers occupied (thank you for reading by the way and feel free to share if someone else might want to read my ramblings). I'll probably latch onto some national stories from the world of harness racing and maybe some localized ones. I will also probably give an overview of what it is like to look at a stakes schedule as we did with In Over My Head. It is quite a balancing act. You want to keep your horse eligible to races where he/ she can make some money, but you don't want to overdo it. I can tell you it is quite easy to see your horse through 'rose colored glasses' and think they are better than they actually are. Not to pat us on the back too much, but I think Greg and I came up with a very reasonable schedule for In Over My Head. I guess only time will tell though.
Lastly, we are happy with our purchase of In Over My Head, but another good buy of the Meadowlands sale is True Gritty. She, like Westside Gritty, is named for the Nitty Gritty in Madison. She started her racing career slowly and only brought $2,200 at the sale (I'm not saying she should have brought a big number, but $2,200 was unreasonably low based on how good we knew she was). Well, congrats to the new owners as she has now finished 3rd in the first two legs of the Hopefull series at Yonkers. That's $2,400 worth of purse money...not bad for a $2,200 horse. I wish her and her connections the best!
Keep checking in...I'll keep coming up with harness related stories while In Over My Head gets a break.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Overcoming Some Extremely Long Odds
The scene was really pretty bland. Sitting at a table at a small bar in rural South Beloit, three guys were staring at a 10-inch TV screen not talking to each other. No food, no drink, just a couple of race programs and pens were sitting in front of them. The tension, as they say, could be cut by a knife. The screen flashed 4 minutes to post time when a couple of nervous comments started to float around. “His odds are dropping like a rock!” (they went from 44-1 to 42-1). “These last couple of minutes are the worst…they seem to take forever.” “I wish I had a fast forward button right now. Just want to get this damn race going.” “What do you think the collective heart rate is at this table right now?” The next four minutes went by very, very slowly as a handful of patrons shuffled around at the northern Illinois off track betting parlor and the three guys at the table had their eyes locked onto the feed coming in from The Meadowlands in New Jersey. Finally it was post time. They all leaned in to get a closer look at the screen.
Approximately 1 minute and 52 seconds later…
The three guys at the table, Greg, Danny and myself, looks as if we just ran the race as opposed to watching In Over My Head take on some of the top 3 year olds in the $82,500 Junior Trendsetter Final. The other patrons had stopped shuffling around and were staring wide eyed at the three lunatics at the table in the middle of the room who just spend the last two minutes screaming at the top of their lungs and pounding the table as if they were urging the colt on themselves (my hand still hurts by the way). We knew our horse was a long shot coming in, but believed he had a decent chance to get into the money (top 5). The bettors didn’t agree. He started at 40-1, dropped to 38-1 and ended up at a distant long shot at 85-1. Luckily the horse doesn’t know his odds and luckily Andy Miller didn’t care either. He drove him like he belonged and he did.
Coming out of post 10 is never an easy thing to do. You need a horse with some speed and a driver with the ability to urge a horse out to find a spot toward the front. Last night it was verified that In Over My Head and Andy Miller might be a match made in heaven because Andy likes to leave and the colt responded very well. By the time we got around the first turn, In Over My Head was in the lead after blowing past nine other very talented horses. We had the lead at the quarter in a snappy, but not ruinous 27.2 and were ready for one of the favorites to breeze on past. That way we could follow them into the stretch and try and close for a check. The #1 horse (I’m So Blue) attempted to make that move, but got hung up just before clearing us, so we went on as the favorite, Hypnotic Blue Chip took the lead. At this point we had been on the front end for over a half mile (in 55.3). It was actually a good thing when HBC cleared us and we were able to have someone to follow around the last turn. Coming out of that last turn, we were in third as the second favorite, Glad to Be Back began his charge on the outside.
At this point, we really revved up our hollering into the mini TV screen. If you yell at a TV loud enough, can a horse 1,000 miles away hear you? Probably not, but we tried anyway. Hypnotic Blue Chip began to separate and I pretty much accepted the fact that a win was not in the cards, which, quite frankly, was fine. In Over My Head was in position to get into the top three if he could somehow hold on. The problem was that he tired. He had to work hard to get to front and never got a break until they were into the last turn. Now, he was a long stretch away from a huge finish for us. Unfortunately, the Calvary was literally coming. Three other horses were coming up on the outside of In Over My Head. Doing the quick math, that was two in front of us and three closely behind us…enough to knock us into 6th, which is good for zero percent of the purse. Watching our colt fight it out in that 5-mile long stretch (OK…it was actually only about three sixteenths of a mile, but it sure felt like 5 miles) was gut wrenching. Despite the fact he was spent, our colt simply was not giving up. He dug in held on, crossing the wire in 3rd and only missing 2nd by a half of a length. Needless to say, we were ecstatic.
That post race feeling is really special. Lots of high fives and handshakes. Many more deep breaths to try and get the heart rate back to normal. Rounds of beers are ordered and the race is recapped amongst each other dozens of times. Phone calls are made to friends and family and, of course, I had to put a quick call into John Butenschoen. From there, it is just a lot of sitting back and basking the happiness of having your horse put up a big race. There was only one thing missing and that was a trip to the barn to see him after the race. I was thinking it and Danny said it too. It would have been nice to congratulate In Over My Head in person, but I guess it isn’t feasible to fly out east every time he races. Hopefully we will get the chance to see him live a number of times this summer.
What happens next? In Over My Head gets a well-deserved rest. He will be turned out for about a month before training back to a targeted mid May qualifier. After that race part of me wants to keep racing him, but a break is the right thing to do. There is no reason to overwork him and burn him out. He can run around in a field and eat grass for a while. Over these last four starts, we had a lot of fun racing him out east. A lot, I mean a lot, can chance between now and mid May, but I’m pretty sure we have one heck of a talented colt on our hands. Thank God our $28,000 bid held. We very well could have one heck of fun summer ahead of us.
Approximately 1 minute and 52 seconds later…
The three guys at the table, Greg, Danny and myself, looks as if we just ran the race as opposed to watching In Over My Head take on some of the top 3 year olds in the $82,500 Junior Trendsetter Final. The other patrons had stopped shuffling around and were staring wide eyed at the three lunatics at the table in the middle of the room who just spend the last two minutes screaming at the top of their lungs and pounding the table as if they were urging the colt on themselves (my hand still hurts by the way). We knew our horse was a long shot coming in, but believed he had a decent chance to get into the money (top 5). The bettors didn’t agree. He started at 40-1, dropped to 38-1 and ended up at a distant long shot at 85-1. Luckily the horse doesn’t know his odds and luckily Andy Miller didn’t care either. He drove him like he belonged and he did.
Coming out of post 10 is never an easy thing to do. You need a horse with some speed and a driver with the ability to urge a horse out to find a spot toward the front. Last night it was verified that In Over My Head and Andy Miller might be a match made in heaven because Andy likes to leave and the colt responded very well. By the time we got around the first turn, In Over My Head was in the lead after blowing past nine other very talented horses. We had the lead at the quarter in a snappy, but not ruinous 27.2 and were ready for one of the favorites to breeze on past. That way we could follow them into the stretch and try and close for a check. The #1 horse (I’m So Blue) attempted to make that move, but got hung up just before clearing us, so we went on as the favorite, Hypnotic Blue Chip took the lead. At this point we had been on the front end for over a half mile (in 55.3). It was actually a good thing when HBC cleared us and we were able to have someone to follow around the last turn. Coming out of that last turn, we were in third as the second favorite, Glad to Be Back began his charge on the outside.
At this point, we really revved up our hollering into the mini TV screen. If you yell at a TV loud enough, can a horse 1,000 miles away hear you? Probably not, but we tried anyway. Hypnotic Blue Chip began to separate and I pretty much accepted the fact that a win was not in the cards, which, quite frankly, was fine. In Over My Head was in position to get into the top three if he could somehow hold on. The problem was that he tired. He had to work hard to get to front and never got a break until they were into the last turn. Now, he was a long stretch away from a huge finish for us. Unfortunately, the Calvary was literally coming. Three other horses were coming up on the outside of In Over My Head. Doing the quick math, that was two in front of us and three closely behind us…enough to knock us into 6th, which is good for zero percent of the purse. Watching our colt fight it out in that 5-mile long stretch (OK…it was actually only about three sixteenths of a mile, but it sure felt like 5 miles) was gut wrenching. Despite the fact he was spent, our colt simply was not giving up. He dug in held on, crossing the wire in 3rd and only missing 2nd by a half of a length. Needless to say, we were ecstatic.
That post race feeling is really special. Lots of high fives and handshakes. Many more deep breaths to try and get the heart rate back to normal. Rounds of beers are ordered and the race is recapped amongst each other dozens of times. Phone calls are made to friends and family and, of course, I had to put a quick call into John Butenschoen. From there, it is just a lot of sitting back and basking the happiness of having your horse put up a big race. There was only one thing missing and that was a trip to the barn to see him after the race. I was thinking it and Danny said it too. It would have been nice to congratulate In Over My Head in person, but I guess it isn’t feasible to fly out east every time he races. Hopefully we will get the chance to see him live a number of times this summer.
What happens next? In Over My Head gets a well-deserved rest. He will be turned out for about a month before training back to a targeted mid May qualifier. After that race part of me wants to keep racing him, but a break is the right thing to do. There is no reason to overwork him and burn him out. He can run around in a field and eat grass for a while. Over these last four starts, we had a lot of fun racing him out east. A lot, I mean a lot, can chance between now and mid May, but I’m pretty sure we have one heck of a talented colt on our hands. Thank God our $28,000 bid held. We very well could have one heck of fun summer ahead of us.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Is that the draw or is it just a list?
I was going to title this entry 'What are the flipping odds?' but my brother called me today and asked 'is that the draw or is it just a list?" He, like the rest of us, flat out couldn't believe what happened...again.
So, back to the other question. Instead of throwing out some ill advised number or comment, I decided to do that math. In the course of a draw in a 10 horse field, drawing each position has equal probability, so you have a 10% chance at landing each spot. A new draw for a new race is a new unique event. So what are the odds of drawing 10 (10%), 10 (10%) 9 or 10 (20%) and 10 (10%). Simply: 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.2 x 0.1 = 0.0002. In a more familiar form to horse racing, the odds of drawing 10, 10, 9, 10 is 5,000 to 1. There’s your flipping odds.
By now I’m sure you realized the somewhat shocking fact we drew post 10 for the final of the Junior Trendsetter series at the Meadowlands on Saturday night. We somehow persevered to overcome 5,000 to 1 odds to draw this poorly. Monumental frustration is a bit of an understatement at this point. For the record I’m not taking the conspiracy theory route. I’m not buying that the Meadowlands has David Stern like frozen envelopes to banish poor In Over My Head and his Sconny owners and Illinois based trainer to a far outside post. I’d be lying if I told you that thought didn’t cross my mind, but it didn’t last long at all. We are just in a major drawing funk right now. That’s all there is to it.
You know what I hope? I hope that the oddsmakers put In Over My Head down as a 5,000 to 1 shot in the program on Saturday. We’ve overcome those odds once…why not twice??? That way my $10 win ticket could be worth $50,000. I could buy another horse! Maybe he or she would draw better…
Since I’m a positive person, I’m going to focus on one big positive. We have our driver, Andy Miller, back with us. I think he will make a big difference. Hopefully we can somehow find a spot early and catch some race flow. He’s good enough to race with this bunch and when you go for $82,500, even 5th place is worth $4,125. Take my half and add it to my $50,000 win ticket and that’s a pretty good payday. Have to try and find some levity in situations like these.
So, back to the other question. Instead of throwing out some ill advised number or comment, I decided to do that math. In the course of a draw in a 10 horse field, drawing each position has equal probability, so you have a 10% chance at landing each spot. A new draw for a new race is a new unique event. So what are the odds of drawing 10 (10%), 10 (10%) 9 or 10 (20%) and 10 (10%). Simply: 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.2 x 0.1 = 0.0002. In a more familiar form to horse racing, the odds of drawing 10, 10, 9, 10 is 5,000 to 1. There’s your flipping odds.
By now I’m sure you realized the somewhat shocking fact we drew post 10 for the final of the Junior Trendsetter series at the Meadowlands on Saturday night. We somehow persevered to overcome 5,000 to 1 odds to draw this poorly. Monumental frustration is a bit of an understatement at this point. For the record I’m not taking the conspiracy theory route. I’m not buying that the Meadowlands has David Stern like frozen envelopes to banish poor In Over My Head and his Sconny owners and Illinois based trainer to a far outside post. I’d be lying if I told you that thought didn’t cross my mind, but it didn’t last long at all. We are just in a major drawing funk right now. That’s all there is to it.
You know what I hope? I hope that the oddsmakers put In Over My Head down as a 5,000 to 1 shot in the program on Saturday. We’ve overcome those odds once…why not twice??? That way my $10 win ticket could be worth $50,000. I could buy another horse! Maybe he or she would draw better…
Since I’m a positive person, I’m going to focus on one big positive. We have our driver, Andy Miller, back with us. I think he will make a big difference. Hopefully we can somehow find a spot early and catch some race flow. He’s good enough to race with this bunch and when you go for $82,500, even 5th place is worth $4,125. Take my half and add it to my $50,000 win ticket and that’s a pretty good payday. Have to try and find some levity in situations like these.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The Lull of Disappointment
Today is Monday. We raced last Thursday and it took until today for me to feel like writing anything about our race. Actually, I just watched the replay for the first time last night and it was, unfortunately, exactly as Greg and Danny had described it. After the extreme excitement of our 2nd place finish in the first leg of the Junior Trendsetter, we followed it up with a hugely disappointing 7th place finish in the second leg.
What happened? We received a bad drive. That is not to say our replacement driver is a bad driver, but in the 7th race at the Meadowlands on Thursday February 12th, he drove poorly with our horse. I really don?t like to badmouth drivers. I know it is much different in the moment of the race and it is very easy to critique from the stands, but if we had Andy Miller, there is simply no way that would have happened. The new driver didn?t know our horse as well. Maybe he should have studied more; maybe we should have told him more. Either way, it doesn?t matter now. Long story short, he allowed In Over My Head to get stuck behind a 100-1 shot. As the long shot died and slowed down, virtually the entire field went past us on the outside and we were locked on the rail with no place to go. Once the world went past us, we were dead in the water. Not fun. Not fun at all.
The bright side? We made the final. Our second place finish in the 1st leg was enough to get us ranked 8th overall (top 10 make it). So despite that disappointing race, we will be going for somewhere in the vicinity of $75,000 on Saturday night and it looks like we will get Andy Miller back driving us (at least I hope so). Also, given the fact we have drawn 10, 10 and 9 we almost HAVE TO get a better draw this time. Maybe things will shape up better this time. I sure hope so. Remember how I said owning a horse is a roller coaster ride? Well, in just two races, we have got a chance to experience both great excitement and disappointment.
What happened? We received a bad drive. That is not to say our replacement driver is a bad driver, but in the 7th race at the Meadowlands on Thursday February 12th, he drove poorly with our horse. I really don?t like to badmouth drivers. I know it is much different in the moment of the race and it is very easy to critique from the stands, but if we had Andy Miller, there is simply no way that would have happened. The new driver didn?t know our horse as well. Maybe he should have studied more; maybe we should have told him more. Either way, it doesn?t matter now. Long story short, he allowed In Over My Head to get stuck behind a 100-1 shot. As the long shot died and slowed down, virtually the entire field went past us on the outside and we were locked on the rail with no place to go. Once the world went past us, we were dead in the water. Not fun. Not fun at all.
The bright side? We made the final. Our second place finish in the 1st leg was enough to get us ranked 8th overall (top 10 make it). So despite that disappointing race, we will be going for somewhere in the vicinity of $75,000 on Saturday night and it looks like we will get Andy Miller back driving us (at least I hope so). Also, given the fact we have drawn 10, 10 and 9 we almost HAVE TO get a better draw this time. Maybe things will shape up better this time. I sure hope so. Remember how I said owning a horse is a roller coaster ride? Well, in just two races, we have got a chance to experience both great excitement and disappointment.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Another tough draw and a driver dilemma.
The draw came out for the second leg of the Junior Trendsetter series to be held on Thursday the 12th and In Over My Head will have a familiar view: from the far outside. After drawing post 10 two times in a row, he landed the ever so slightly better #9 post. You know, these draws tend to even out, so we are staying optimistic that all of our positive draw karma is simply being stored up and will manifest itself at a later date. At least I hope so. I don’t want to have to dig up an old Jim Rome audio clip where former Cub Mark Grace describes his method of ‘slump busting’….
Our leg of the race has been graced with a bit of royal lineage. A horse by the name of Lisagain will be making his first lifetime start after posting a couple of impressive qualifiers. Lisagain is the half brother of Lis Mara, who in four seasons on the racetrack earned $2,141,000 in 63 lifetime starts. That works out to about $34,000 per start, which makes him a harness horse version of an ATM machine. The importance of facing Lisagain goes beyond his expected talent. He is trained by Erv Miller, one of the top trainers in racing who also happen to be brothers with Andy Miller. If you remember, Andy Miller has been driving In Over My Head the last two starts and has done a great job for us. The reality is that we will probably lose Andy for this race as he will opt to take the reigns for Lisagain. That is just part of the game and we are in no way upset that Andy chose another horse over ours given the background. However, we are now faced with trying to find a new driver for Thursday.
Luckily for us, there are a number of very talented drivers at the Meadowlands that currently are not listed on a horse in our race. We should find out tomorrow if we got our second choice.
Our leg of the race has been graced with a bit of royal lineage. A horse by the name of Lisagain will be making his first lifetime start after posting a couple of impressive qualifiers. Lisagain is the half brother of Lis Mara, who in four seasons on the racetrack earned $2,141,000 in 63 lifetime starts. That works out to about $34,000 per start, which makes him a harness horse version of an ATM machine. The importance of facing Lisagain goes beyond his expected talent. He is trained by Erv Miller, one of the top trainers in racing who also happen to be brothers with Andy Miller. If you remember, Andy Miller has been driving In Over My Head the last two starts and has done a great job for us. The reality is that we will probably lose Andy for this race as he will opt to take the reigns for Lisagain. That is just part of the game and we are in no way upset that Andy chose another horse over ours given the background. However, we are now faced with trying to find a new driver for Thursday.
Luckily for us, there are a number of very talented drivers at the Meadowlands that currently are not listed on a horse in our race. We should find out tomorrow if we got our second choice.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
February 6th - First leg of the Junior Trendsetter at the Meadowlands
Alright, I’m officially excited. Last night In Over My Head made his 2nd start under our ownership. Again he had the 10 hole and was up against arguable the best in the Junior Trendsetter series, Light Up the Sky. A talented colt trained by George Teague. We knew IOMH would be better. He’d be tighter after last week’s race, but having to come from so far out yet again was probably going to be way too much against this bunch. I was hoping for a check (a top 5 finish). I didn’t yet know if he had the ability to overcome an outside post against a bunch like this. The handicapper at the Meadowlands always comments on their website about each horse in each race. “His name might say it all!” I’m sure we’ll hear that a lot this year! Danny was upset and sent him a friendly message. In the end, though, all that matters is how the horse races. Luckily for us, he raced well. Real well.
I was sitting on the bench of our JV basketball game at a rival high school. It was the 4th quarter and we had the game in hand. Our guys had played relatively well at times and managed to open up by about 25 points. With under a minute to play, I felt my phone ring. Obviously, I wasn’t going to answer it, but I had a good feeling who it was. The race probably had just gotten over and Greg and Danny were watching it live in Beloit. After our post game speech, I took a look. It was Danny and he had left a message. Should I listen to the message first…call him back right away? These are the tough decisions you face as a race horse owner who also moonlights as a volunteer basketball coach which keeps you from being able to watch the race live. I decided to listen to the message. My heart was pounding as I pushed the play button: “Colt raced huge” Danny led with…by the way, that is a favorite line. “Colt raced huge”. I love being able to say that. Anyway, the colt raced huge and took 2nd, missing a victory by literally a neck against the favorite. WOW. I thought he was kidding at first. I was half jumping up and down, grinning from ear to ear when the athletic director for the school we just beat walked by. He had kind of a sour look on his face like ‘this jerk is pretty happy about waxing our JV team’. I kind of wanted to respond with ‘it’s OK, I’m actually celebrating because of a horse race!’, but decided that maybe wasn’t the best thing to say in a high school so I instead just toned down my act and gave a nodding hello. Anyway, Danny and Greg said that if he hadn’t got locked up going into the stretch he may have won it. Once he got clear, he hit the turbo booster and started eating up ground on the favorite. “Just like that night John brushed him past the clubhouse at Maywood,” Danny said. That gave me goose bumps as I remember that very well.
After watching the varsity game I headed over to our favorite hangout with some other coaches: The Nitty Gritty on the west side of Madison. My former favorite horse carried the name of the bar “Westside Gritty” who I owned part of in the first edition of It’s A Stretch Stable. Here is a nice story about her: http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/moe/238758
We had to let her go as part of the partnership agreement, but she had remained my favorite. Luckily, IOMH has now filled that void. On the way to the restaurant, I got a chance to talk with John Butenschoen (our trainer). It is always great to talk to the trainer after a good race. As a rule, I never call the trainer after a bad race. What is there to talk about? We all know things go wrong. Nothing good comes of those conversations in my opinion. They can be discussed the next day. We have a similar rule in coaching. We don’t talk to patents of player’s right after the game. Too much emotion is often involved. The conversations are always much more productive after having 24 hours to digest the events. Anyway, we didn’t have too much to say. He raced well. We joked about our bad luck drawing the 10 hole and figured our luck had to change. That conversation was followed up with watching the Badger basketball team break their 6 game loosing streak against a good Illinois team. What a night. Two wins with the high school team, a 2nd in the Junior Trendsetter and a Badger win. I wish every day could be like that!
As soon as I got home, I fired up the computer to watch the replay. For some reason, I was kind of nervous. Not sure why…it’s not like anything is going to change on a replay. Danny and Greg had given the perfect account, so there was nothing surprising to see. As they had mentioned, we were lucky to have Andy Miller again drive him and he did a great job, as always. The one thing that stuck out, though, was the last move. The move that almost got him the win. It was literally like he kicked on the turbo boosters. I’ve been thinking that In Over My Head needs a nickname. Turbo? Sounds kind of cool…will have to discuss that with my fellow owners. Here is a link of the story from ustrotting.com:
http://www.ustrotting.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=30496
I was sitting on the bench of our JV basketball game at a rival high school. It was the 4th quarter and we had the game in hand. Our guys had played relatively well at times and managed to open up by about 25 points. With under a minute to play, I felt my phone ring. Obviously, I wasn’t going to answer it, but I had a good feeling who it was. The race probably had just gotten over and Greg and Danny were watching it live in Beloit. After our post game speech, I took a look. It was Danny and he had left a message. Should I listen to the message first…call him back right away? These are the tough decisions you face as a race horse owner who also moonlights as a volunteer basketball coach which keeps you from being able to watch the race live. I decided to listen to the message. My heart was pounding as I pushed the play button: “Colt raced huge” Danny led with…by the way, that is a favorite line. “Colt raced huge”. I love being able to say that. Anyway, the colt raced huge and took 2nd, missing a victory by literally a neck against the favorite. WOW. I thought he was kidding at first. I was half jumping up and down, grinning from ear to ear when the athletic director for the school we just beat walked by. He had kind of a sour look on his face like ‘this jerk is pretty happy about waxing our JV team’. I kind of wanted to respond with ‘it’s OK, I’m actually celebrating because of a horse race!’, but decided that maybe wasn’t the best thing to say in a high school so I instead just toned down my act and gave a nodding hello. Anyway, Danny and Greg said that if he hadn’t got locked up going into the stretch he may have won it. Once he got clear, he hit the turbo booster and started eating up ground on the favorite. “Just like that night John brushed him past the clubhouse at Maywood,” Danny said. That gave me goose bumps as I remember that very well.
After watching the varsity game I headed over to our favorite hangout with some other coaches: The Nitty Gritty on the west side of Madison. My former favorite horse carried the name of the bar “Westside Gritty” who I owned part of in the first edition of It’s A Stretch Stable. Here is a nice story about her: http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/moe/238758
We had to let her go as part of the partnership agreement, but she had remained my favorite. Luckily, IOMH has now filled that void. On the way to the restaurant, I got a chance to talk with John Butenschoen (our trainer). It is always great to talk to the trainer after a good race. As a rule, I never call the trainer after a bad race. What is there to talk about? We all know things go wrong. Nothing good comes of those conversations in my opinion. They can be discussed the next day. We have a similar rule in coaching. We don’t talk to patents of player’s right after the game. Too much emotion is often involved. The conversations are always much more productive after having 24 hours to digest the events. Anyway, we didn’t have too much to say. He raced well. We joked about our bad luck drawing the 10 hole and figured our luck had to change. That conversation was followed up with watching the Badger basketball team break their 6 game loosing streak against a good Illinois team. What a night. Two wins with the high school team, a 2nd in the Junior Trendsetter and a Badger win. I wish every day could be like that!
As soon as I got home, I fired up the computer to watch the replay. For some reason, I was kind of nervous. Not sure why…it’s not like anything is going to change on a replay. Danny and Greg had given the perfect account, so there was nothing surprising to see. As they had mentioned, we were lucky to have Andy Miller again drive him and he did a great job, as always. The one thing that stuck out, though, was the last move. The move that almost got him the win. It was literally like he kicked on the turbo boosters. I’ve been thinking that In Over My Head needs a nickname. Turbo? Sounds kind of cool…will have to discuss that with my fellow owners. Here is a link of the story from ustrotting.com:
http://www.ustrotting.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=30496
It Begins – First Race – January 29th
In Over My Head made his first lifetime start under new ownership (Greg and I) tonight. I was unable to watch the race as I was lucky enough to be in Phoenix for a work function and got the results from Danny. When he called, I was pretty nervous, but really wasn’t expecting too much. I really was just hoping he didn’t make a break and that he showed enough to merit putting him in the Junior Trendsetter. The result wasn’t shockingly good, but very strong. He took 5th. That may not sound like much, but considering he was coming out of the 10 hole and was a little short (meaning he wasn’t in his sharpest form due to a couple of weeks off). Also, he brushed to the front with ease, showing some speed and despite being pretty tired, he dug in tough in the stretch. Nice first race. We were all pretty excited with his performance…and by the fact he didn’t make a break!
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