Slow and Steady

“Slow and steady wins the race!” Marge Simpson (yes, I mean the cartoon character)

I can’t say I agree with Marge on that one, especially when it comes to horse racing. Marge would not make a very good horse owner, although she would be thriving in our current situation. Slow and steady…hopefully will get us back to the races.

We actually have some small good news to report. In Over My Head continues to work his way back down into race shape. He has officially trained past the point he was at in Florida before he had a flare up of his suspensory injury. We’d like to thank the Leonards who have provided him a roof over his head, a pool to swim in and a track to jog on until Tyler Butenschoen gets back from Florida to open up the farm. Today, he will go his second training mile with a target time of around 2:50. Still a long ways to go, yet a long ways from where he started. We are kind of in the middle. If (and that is one enormous ‘if’) he can progress at this pace, he could be racing by mid to late June.

An interesting story form the world of harness racing. The owner of Hypnotic Blue Chip (arguably the top open pacer in world) has challenged St. Elmo’s Hero to a match race. ‘Hero’ is a late bloomer on a 24 race win streak. It would be quite a fun thing to watch, but it seems like Hero’s owners aren’t interested. Maybe Mo can come back to his old form someday and we can take the challenge! Link to the story is below:

http://xwebapp.ustrotting.com/absolutenm/templates/?a=41812&z=1

In Showtime Shark news, he is finally out of the stall and back jogging. His freak injury (if you remember, he kicked a stall with his back right leg, breaking his coffin bone) has healed and he is sound again. The vets tell us he should have no long term negative effects form the injury. He just needs to stop being a knucklehead when not on the track. Timeline for Mr. Seeknee’s return is roughly August. Imagine, we have a chance to have both of these horses racing by late summer. We’ll see…one week at a time.

Swimming the Winter Away

It has certainly been awhile. I was a little surprised last week when I got my sitemeter results and found that despite the fact no new material has been posted here in over 2 months, 20 people still found their way to the blog home of In Over My Head. When I saw that, I thought it was time for a new update. It isn’t great (or even good), but it is what it is.

- Last post I referenced a possible flare up of his suspensory injury. Unfortunately, that did materialize and we had to pull him from the Florida training facility and send him back to Illinois for more treatment.

- The new treatment went well from what we were told and after some additional stall rest, he was been moved to a new facility for the next phase in his recovery.

- That phase is…swimming! Yes, Mo is taking a more buoyant approach to training and has been swimming in a special pool (for horses) at the Leonards farm in Illinois (near Butenschoen’s).

- Once the weather stabilizes and the track at Butenschoen’s gets over the winter thaw, he’ll go back to jogging and training down.

- If he makes it thought that phase, we’ll figure out what is next. Based on the setbacks he has faced, we aren’t thinking that far down the road yet. Just taking it one step at a time.

At this point, we have really come to accept Mo’s fate. He hasn’t raced in over a year. He’s still months away and to be brutally honest, there is a very real possibility he will never race again. All we can be is hopeful. We never envisioned this bad of an injury would befall him in the first place. Right now, it is hard to envision a successful return to the track, but you never know. For now, he’ll just keep swimming. There are certainly worse ways to spend the winter.

Speaking of injury setbacks, Showtime Shark (aka Seeknee) is still nursing his broken coffin bone. We got a report a couple weeks ago that the healing is going well and there should not be any long term negative effects form the injury. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the soonest he could be back to the track is looking like September. Patience is a virtue.

So for now, we can focus on Laura and my wedding on May 7th in Key West, FL. We are getting married on Derby Day (kind of by accident). We may not be lucky with horses at the moment, but we are certainly lucky to have each other…and maybe someday we can once again be lucky with both!

Happy Holiday's (and looking forward to next year)

Tis the season for lots of things. Presents, family gatherings, Christmas parties (and hangovers) and holiday cards. Some are simple…a card with a signature. Some have pictures (Greg’s family card included a picture of In Over My Head, which was awesome) and some have page long updates of what the family has been up to all year. I always enjoy reading those to keep up with friends and relatives, especially those I don’t get to see a lot. What I really appreciate are the brutally honest ones that let everyone know that the year has not gone particularly well. I think we could have written one of those talking about our horses this year. Just for fun, I’m going to give it a shot.

I hope that this letter finds you well. We are limping toward the end of what has turned out to be a rather challenging year in 2010. We started out with high expectations and ended with a couple of busted up horses and a pile of vet bills.

In Over My Head began the year giving us hope that 2010 would be a very special year. A year in which we could watch our champion horse in many big races and that champion would allow us to grow our stable. He won his first two races against solid competition out at the Meadowlands and was the favorite in the final of a mini series. Unfortunately, he finished 8th and after two agonizing weeks of analysis, we found out he had a torn suspensory ligament, which is a career threatening injury. After enough stall rest to allow him to be mobile again, we brought him back to the Midwest to rest.

In early summer, our hopes turned to Showtime Shark (aka, See-knee), a talented 2 year old who had trained town effortlessly and was ready to qualify and get to the track. We figured he would allow us to forget about the sad story of In Over My Head at least for awhile. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way. He was impeded in his first qualifier, but stayed flat and finished well. He was then impeded again in his 2nd qualifier and had to make a sharp turn around the breaker. While somehow managing to come home in 27.0 despite the detour, he jammed himself up pretty good. Between that and some general growing pains, we had to quit with him before he made his first start.

Late fall brought new hope for us, as In Over My Head was finally able to leave the paddock and get back onto the track down in Florida. Despite being rather overweight, he loved to be back on the track. With John B. down in Florida, we sent Showtime Shark over to the Julie Miller stable after a few months off. He came back sound and without soreness, which was very encouraging. He was trained down to 2:23 and we were just a few weeks away from his first start and making a run at the Junior Trendsetter at the Meadowlands. Not so fast. He was dead lame one morning when they went to get him out of his stall and it turns out he broke his back right coffin bone by kicking the stall too hard. You might think that broken bones from kicking stalls is rather rare. You’d be right, so we have that going for us. He’ll be out until about August.

Lastly, we had what we hope is only a scare last week when In Over My Head’s once injured leg started to swell up again. Could be nothing, could be something. We’ll find out soon enough.

Merry Christmas to you and your family

Team In Over My Head

Well, there you have it. Our brutally honest Christmas card for 2010. This doesn’t even take into account other challenges outside of racing that have arisen, some small and some large. I’ve often heard people say that in life, you have to go through the hard times to really appreciate the good times. 2010 was no doubt hard. I remember thinking in early 2010 when In Over My Head came out winning that it was almost too good to be true. Well, apparently it was. Despite all of this, it has only brought us closer together. Even though we currently have two horses, and only one is about half healthy, I have a feeling good things are on the horizon. We continue to find ways to laugh and joke about the recent hurdles and if we can laugh now, just think how much fun we will have when happy days are here again.

Fun With Math: Would Mo Have Won This Year's Windy City Pace?

Another exciting edition of the Windy City Pace took place last Friday at Maywood Park. The heavy favorite, On More Laugh, was knocked off in a near photo finish. Like last year, the #2 horse was bet down nearly as far as the favorite. Last year, that horse was Sheer Desire. This year, it was Razzle Dazzle. Also like last year, neither one of those favorites crossed the wire first. The upset wasn’t quite as dramatic as Aracache Hanover, a 4-1 horse who drew the rail, showed plenty of guts holding off On More Laugh for his Canadian driver (Doug McNair) and trainer (Doug’s father Gregg McNair). Congrats to the connections of Aracache Hanover. It was a lot of fun watching their excitement in the winners circle from our spot up in the clubhouse…now, it wasn’t nearly as fun as BEING IN the winner circle, but I feel like we understand just how special that experience is after our win last year.

There was another interesting part of the race that really reminded Danny and I of last year’s Windy City. The number 5 horse, Stonebridge Tonic, worked out a second over trip behind Razzle Dazzle and headed into the stretch in an eerily similar position to In Over My Head last year. Despite a nice finish, Stonebridge Tonic just didn’t have the same kick that In Over My Head did at the end. When looking at the lines, they don’t look that different. Mo’s last quarter in 2009 was 28.1, while Tonic’s was 28.2. However, a quick look at the replays tells a very different story. Take a look at the links below. Watch In Over My Head close in the stretch like he was shot out of a cannon and then watch Stonebridge Tonic.

2009 Windy City:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dspRHcIMsnA

2010 Windy City:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZiZ0lvmYWk

Watching those two video’s begged an interesting question: With the same trip Stonebridge Tonic got, would In Over My Head have won this year’s Windy City Pace?

The answer is below, but get ready, we have lots of fun with math. Put your thinking cap on.

To start with we need to establish some assumptions:

- The distance of the stretch at Maywood Park = 594 feet, which = 0.1125 miles
- In 2009, In Over My Head was charted as back 4 and ¾ lengths behind the leader, If I Can Dream, coming into the stretch (ie, with 594 feet to go).
- A ‘length’ in harness racing in an official race chart = approximately 10 feet (the approximate length of a horse and the race bike).
- We are going to assume that If I Can Dream traveled his last quarter mile in equal fashion, meaning that his 29.0 second last quarter equated to a 13.05 second time in the ‘stretch’. This assumption is somewhat up for discussion, but I will test this later.

Coming into the stretch, In Over My Head was trailing If I Can Dream by approximately 47.5 feet (4 and ¾ lengths at 10 feet per length). At the wire, he had beaten If I Can Dream by a head, which is equivalent to about 3 feet, meaning he made up approximately 50.5 feet in the last 594 feet of racetrack. This means Mo traveled that last distance 8.5% faster. Applying that percentage to If I Can Dream’s 13.05 second ‘stretch’ equates to Mo’s stretch time of 11.94 seconds.

Using those numbers, Mo traveled the last 594 feet at 49.75 feet per second, while IICD was moving at 45.51 feet per second. That is 4.23 feet per second times 13.05 seconds (again, that is IICD’s stretch time) means that Mo made up 55 feet. Considering he was down nearly 48 feet going into the stretch and won by about 3 feet, we have a pretty good case that those numbers are correct. If not perfect, they are close. The reality is that IICD probably came home slightly faster in the stretch than he did in the beginning of the last quarter. A champion horse like him would gut out some additional speed when being pushed at the end. If that was the case, it would shrink that 55 feet by a foot or two and the numbers would match up perfectly.

With that, let’s take a look at this year’s race.

Aracache Hanover’s last quarter last night was 28.2. Given that Mo’s was 28.1 you would think he would have no chance to make up that kind of ground, but go back to those replays. Mo’s final dash to the finish line may have been enough to get him here. Let’s go back to the numbers.

Again assuming a consistent last quarter for Aracache Hanover, his stretch time was 12.78 seconds (noticeably faster than If I Can Dream’s 13.05). That is 46.48 feet per second.

Stonebridge Tonic (the horse who had the 2nd over trip that we are replacing with Mo) was just 3 and 1/2 lengths behind Aracache Hanover as then came into the stretch, or approximately 35 feet. Using Mo’s stretch time of 49.75 feet per means he was covering an extra 3.27 feet each second. Take that over the last 12.78 seconds and Mo would have made up 41.8 feet in the stretch. Remember he was behind by 35 feet, which means that:

In Over My Head would have WON by 6.8 feet, or nearly three quarters of a length!

I understand that can be disputed, but it is WELL within reason to think that Mo would have at the very least been in the photo finish if he had Stonebridge Tonic’s trip. I’m not trying to prove he is better or worse than any of the horses in this year’s race, but just making the point that his last 594 feet in the 2009 Windy City Pace was insanely fast.

Here are some other interesting stats about the race and that stretch drive of Mo.

The 2009 Windy City Pace was completed in 1 minute and 52.4 seconds. That equates to an average speed of 32.03 miles per hour.

The fastest harness race ever was completed in 1 minutes and 47.4 seconds. That equates to an average speed of 33.5 mph.

In his stretch drive, In Over My Head was traveling at 33.93 mph. Not bad on a half mile track coming out of a turn on a cool November evening.

As Mo continues his slim fast diet down in Florida with John Butenschoen, I only hope that he can return to his old form. I can’t wait to see him unleash that final kick in those short half mile stretches at Yonkers, Maywood and other short tracks. If you ever get a chance to watch Mo race in the future, just remember that is isn’t over until they cross that finish line.

Windy City Memory

Life is pretty busy right now. Work has picked up, we started practice at the high school where I coach basketball, wedding planning continues and the holiday’s are just around the corner. Regardless, I find some time everyday to check on the ins and outs of harness racing. Two states where we race (Illinois and New Jersey) are in battles over new legislation that would allow either slots at the racetracks or in the case of the Meadowlands, allow racing at all. My take on that is simple. If you are a state that allows gambling, there is no reason you should try and stop a slots at the track bill. If you don’t believe in ANY gambling, I can respect that as well…it is a totally different argument. However, in states where gambling exists, slots at tracks generates more gambling revenue, costs the taxpayers nothing and supports and entire sub-industry of horse racing that creates thousands of jobs, often in rural areas. It also encourages out of state investment and what state wouldn’t want out of staters pumping money into their industries? The ONLY reason to stop something like that is if you are in bed with the casinos or just totally against gambling of any kind. That’s it. It is a damn shame to watch the sputtering political process. Let’s forget about those issues just for a second and flashback a year.

Last year everything was very different. While there were other things going on, the focus was more directed toward one thing: The Windy City Pace.

Greg, Danny and I were cautiously optimistic about In Over My Head’s chances in the week leading up to the Windy City. We liked his post position (#3) and were confident veteran driver Dale Hiteman could carve out a good trip for him. With a purse of $225,000, fifth place would lead to a payday of $11,250 and take Mo over the $100,000 mark for the year. Not too shabby. I distinctly remember taking little pieces of paper with horses names on them and sliding them around my desk trying to simulate possible scenarios of how the race could break down. I was pretty sure that Mo would get shuffled back and be out of the money coming into the stretch. However, we knew his closing kick was fast…especially on a half mile track since he can go from 80% speed to 100% speed in a heartbeat on that short home stretch. I thought it would be enough to get in for 5th…MAYBE even 4th. The stretch goal was third. That would have been incredible.

Well, we were right about one thing. He did use his rocket fire finishing kick that night, but after Hiteman worked out a second over trip, he wasn’t fighting for fifth. He was closing on the leaders and when he crossed the wire just a nose in front of Sheer Desire, he had delivered us a once in a lifetime memory.

The full story that I wrote the day after can be found here. It still gives me goose bumps:

http://inovermyheadracehorse.blogspot.com/2009/11/o-my-godi-think-he-just-won-it.html

There are so many parts to the story of that are fun to remember, but one that has been coming to me in recent days takes us all the way back to when In Over My Head was just two. I went down to Maywood one night to watch him race in a simple little non winners of 2 conditioned race. I was only a small owner at that time through John Butenschoen’s partnership. Greg and I didn’t buy him together until about three months later at an auction. As fate would have it, Danny planned to head down that night too as one of Greg’s horses was also racing that night. What better way to spend a night than heading down to Maywood with Danny and talking horses for the 4 + hour car ride? At that time, Mo (who wasn’t known as Mo yet), was struggling with making a lot of breaks. As it turned out, he was just having some growing and maturity issues, but we didn’t know that at the time. In one of his warmup trips, John brushed him past the grandstand at full speed. He wanted to test him a bit before the race given his recent problems. I vividly remember standing on the rail that night with no one around but Danny and I. In Over My Head looked awesome and in that short stretch of racetrack displayed incredible speed. “Damn he’s fast” I thought at the time.

About 14 months later, on Windy City Pace night in 2009, he was even faster over that exact same stretch of racetrack. He needed every ounce of that speed to win the race. The only thing faster that night was our group charging down to the winner’s circle. I’m pretty sure we would have even left Mo in the dust.

That night, Greg, Danny, Kacy, Laura, my brother Kirk, Laura’s brother Ryan and wife Jamie got to take in the experience of having our 55-1 long shot win. It was so much fun, we decided to go back this year. Even though we don’t have a horse racing, what better way to remember that night than to be at the track? I wish everyone racing in this year’s Windy City Pace the best of luck. Can lightening strike twice? I don’t know…that would mean One More Laugh (a horse the quality of If I Can Dream) would have to get upset.

In that magical #3 post position is a horse named Voomerang. His stats are strikingly similar to In Over My Head’s last year. I’m sure he’ll be a long shot. I’m also sure I’ll put a couple buck down on him to win.

The Comeback Begins

Welcome back to the old blog. We aren't done here...not by a long shot (pun intended). As we speak, In Over My Head is enjoying a warm late fall evening at the beautiful Southern Oaks Trainng Center just north of Orlando, FL. As you can see in the picture, it is a wonderful place for a horse to spend the winter months. From what I understand, Mo didn't want to get on the trailer to head down (maybe he knew it was a 24 hour trip), but I'm sure when he go there he realized we sent him to a great place.

Before he left, Mo got a chance to hit the track down at Butenschoen's in Marengo, IL with Tyler in the training bike. To say he was a kid in a candy store would be quite an understatement. Apparently, he was throwing his head, turning around and doing a lot of 'talking'. I'm not exactlay sure what he sounds like when he's talking, but had I known he was going to put on a show I would have skipped out of work to watch those jog miles.

Now that we are back, I plan to put together more posts again (and longer ones than this), but I just wanted to check in and let the couple of loyal readers we have that Mo is OK...actually he is far better than OK, he's back jogging again and I'm sure he couldn't be happier.

A Thought Provoking Picture

A picture, as they say, is sometimes worth a thousand words. The picture to the left may not be worth that many, but I keep looking at it and thinking about the symbolism. I took this picture of In Over My Head last Sunday at his current home in Mineral Point. Laura and I went up with Greg for one of his daily feedings. While we stood there watching him, he paused and looked out of his barn door. Since I’m always looking for good pictures of Mo, I thought it might make a good phone background. The more I look at it the more intriguing it is.

(a quick side note, the plan was to take the picture from my phone and copy it here, but due to some kind of glitch, it has been 'erased' even though it still shows up as my background....which is why you get to see a picture of a picture!)

Behind him, is darkness, which represents the past seven months of his life. Major injury, weeks of stall rest and visits by vets, pain in his leg followed by minimal activity, more vets, and some remaining pain. After additional slow rehab work, he finally gets to the point he is now. Kind of in purgatory. Life certainly isn’t bad up at his Mineral Point home. He gets excellent care and attention (Greg goes up to feed him three times a day), he gets a big stall to himself every night and gets turned out every day. Has his own paddock with an open barn area as well (as seen in the picture). Certainly many horses have it worse, but this isn’t the best life for Mo. After all, he is a racehorse. He lives to race. Taking away racing would be like taking away football from Brett Favre (he obviously struggles with walking away). My favorite part of the picture is what is in front of him. In Over My Head is looking to a brighter future both actually (in the picture) and figuratively. His leg has finally healed, which will allow him to move forward into that bright future.

As of today, he is less than two months away from taking his next big step back to the track. We are planning on sending him down to Florida to train with John Butenschoen this winter. If all goes well, he’ll be back racing in April. To those that have read this blog for awhile, you may remember that we told In Over My Head on the night of the Windy City pace that if he won, we’d send him to Florida for the winter. Well, we are going to end up making good on that promise after all. By sending him to Florida, we can say he is getting the best possible path back into racing. We all hope beyond hope that he makes it back to the track and is the monster that he used to be. He deserves the best, which is why he is getting the ‘Cadillac Package’.

It is kind of an interesting time to look back. Had Mo stayed healthy, we would all probably be heading down to Delaware, Ohio, home of the Little Brown Jug. The Jug is the most special of the major three year old events (in my opinion at least). It is raced at a fair track, in front of a huge crowd (they usually draw 30,000+) and it is raced in heats. Heat racing was the norm for many, many years in racing. In summary, you have to win twice in one day to be crowned ‘champion’. It is a true test of a horse’s heart and guts. While In Over My Head would not be able to race in the Jug, we did plan on racing him in the Winbak Open pace. The purse isn’t huge (about $45k), but the chance to race on Jug day was something we were extremely excited about when Mo was healthy and we started to make stakes payments in mid February. Looking at the field, he would have fit just fine. He has already raced against 3 of the 5 participants. He got beat a nose by Nob Hill High in DuQuoin, went 1 for 2 against Annieswesterncard and could have held his own against Booze Crusin had he not been sick that night last fall in the open at Balmoral. I guess we will just have to try again next year.

In other news, Showtime Shark is probably a couple of weeks from getting back jogging again. We still aren’t too sure what his short term future holds, mostly because of the uncertainly surrounding the Meadowlands racetrack, which is currently in the middle of a turf battle for the future of gambling dollars with Atlantic City. The State of New Jersey is trying to figure out what location to support going forward. I’m obviously biased, but on one hand, you have the premier track in all of racing and in the other you have an afterthought grouping of casinos. You have brand awareness in the Meadowlands and a punch line in Atlantic City. Horse owners, trainers and breeders spend millions and million of dollars in New Jersey for horses because of the Meadowland’s brand, but casino gambling has become more and more a business of convenience given the fact there are casinos in nearly every state. Only Las Vegas remains a gambling destination. Long story short, if New Jersey wants to keep people like me spending money on horses, vets, trainers and when we come to visit hotel, restaurants, rental cars, etc, go with the Meadowladns. This falls into the realm of ‘no brainer’ as far as I’m concerned. Again, I know I’m biased. So, long story short, if there is a Junior Trendsetter next year, we will enter Showtime and probably travel to New Jersey to see him. I hope it works out.

Lastly, please join me in an Internet based round of applause for ‘Dashing’ Danny Carey. Danny just finished his first full year as a driver on the Wisconsin Fair Circuit and finished in the top three of drivers while also driving the Trotter of the Year. Nice work Danny! Maybe someday when we all run into the winner’s circle after an In Over My Head win we can congratulate him as our winning driver.