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And the finale. The New Jersey Hunt Cup timber stakes doesn’t test horses quite like Maryland or Pennsylvania, but it’s still worth $50,000 and caps the day in style as the seventh and final race on the card. The seven runners include Ebanour, who won this race in 2015, plus veteran stakes horse Straight To It and upstarts Where’s The Beef, De Chera, Super Saturday, Enuff Alex and Certain Swagger.
The Peapack hurdle brings together the best in the filly/mare division and, as usual, it’s a mixed bag vying for a $75,000 purse in the day’s sixth race. Swoop broke her maiden in a stakes at Saratoga. Stablemate Sarah Joyce won twice this spring. For Goodness Sake looked great at Fair Hill, average at Saratoga. Pure Deal broke her maiden by almost 10 lengths in April. Ciboure might be a freak. Dive in.
Ah, the Far Hills maiden – proving ground of future Hall of Famer McDynamo among others. Worth $50,000, it’s the maiden race to win every year though no guarantee of future success. The second of seven races on the day, this year’s renewal drew the maximum of 10 plus four more on the also-eligible list. Five of the 14 make their debuts. Sires include Dynaformer (two), Tapit, Indian Charlie, Tiznow, Awesome Again, Sea The Stars and Tiznow.
Buck Benny leads the field in experience, not always a good thing for maidens, with 11 starts.
American steeplechasing’s richest day opens with with the Gladstone, a $50,000 hurdle stakes for 3-year-olds that used to be late in the card. Earlier seems to make sense, other than the jockeys might be proceeding with caution given all the rich opportunities late in the day. Five of the nine exit a 3-year-old maiden hurdle race at Shawan. First Friday won that one. Can he repeat? Post time at Far Hills is 1 p.m., but plan on arriving much sooner or risk spending the first two races in traffic.
Head flipping, noseband flying, hooves stepping in place, All The Way Jose looked ready to go – and then some – Tuesday morning at trainer Jonathan Sheppard’s Ashwell Stable near Unionville, Pa. Exercise rider and assistant trainer Keri Brion laughed at the antics.
Darren Nagle and Sean McDermott leaned on an iron rail along the horsepath at Belmont Park last month and knocked each other, their rides and their chances on winning the National Steeplechase Association jockeys’ championship this year.
Two days. Fourteen races. One-hundred-and-four horses. The National Steeplechase Association’s autumn season started with a rush over the weekend with race meets at Shawan Downs outside Baltimore and Foxfield near Charlottesville, Va. Winners came from all angles and in races on the flat, over hurdles and over timber – the latter for the first time since Fair Hill in May.
And a maiden shall lead them. As of Sept. 25, Moscato – an English-bred 6-year-old who started 2017 as a maiden over hurdles – is the leading steeplechaser in the country with $156,000 in earnings. He’s won four times, and finished second twice, in six starts. And after winning last week’s William Entenmann Memorial novice stakes at Belmont Park, he’s got people thinking.
Almost four years ago, jump jockey Darren Nagle realized the biggest win of his career when Divine Fortune ran away with the Grand National on the way to an Eclipse Award as champion steeplechaser of 2013. One race later, Nagle rode 3-year-old first-timer All The Way Jose. “I got on him and gave him absolutely no ride whatsoever,” Nagle recalled Thursday. “The next season he was novice champion and I never rode him again.”
Dear Thoroughbred breeders, owners, trainers, buyers and breakers who worry about the mindset of the progeny of a certain leading sire . . . we give you Mutasaawy and trainer Neil Morris. “You hear it from people about Tapits being a little bit difficult, but that’s not him,” trainer Neil Morris said of the 7-year-old gelding he trains for Pathfinder Racing. “He’s like a Labrador to travel with, to do anything with.”
