The Challenge – Week 18

Week 10 brought 4 horses to the track an collected 10 sire cards.  That’s the good news.  10 cards means we had winners, and three of them were winners but the bad news with the cards is that they were all G-cards.  So starting with the card counts this week (which is usually tallied at the end of my article). we’ll exchange all of the G’s for 2 F’s.   That gives the stable a current hand of 2-D, 2-E,3-F and 1-G

The one horse that let the stabel down was the one who was not a winner and that came from AP’s GOLDEN MUMMY, the horse that was bred as the result of last years challenge series.  He entered the race with a 2-2-0 record in four starts and I brought him back to the dirt after his only turf race (a winner at a mile).  This time he ran the same distance n the dirt and when the doors to the gate opened,  he broke a bit slower than normal and settled into the fifth spot, a bit off from his style to fight up front.  He was in a NW3L race and just fizzled out and finished 11th out of 13 in the field.   A very disappointing race and hard to tell where things went wrong.  Could be the rider, could be he liked the turf better and was reluctant coming back to dirt, could be he was just off his game for the day.  Not sure yet what the plans will be going forward but I’m leaning toward the mile dirt again.

BRED TO CHALLENGE was bred at the beginning of this year by using some of the left over credits from last  year to buy a Lope De Vega share and breed that to a Galileo mare I had in one of the other stables I possess.   He made his second start of the year and nudged up slightly in turf distance from 5f to 5.5f .  After finishing a mediocre fifth in his debut, he improved with a bump in speed from 57 to 69 with a nice move to advance from a midfield fifth to win by just shy of a stride.   30 BP’s were a nice reward with the improvement.

Making his third start for the stable and his second in a row at IA and at a distance of 7.5f in the starter allowance class ($5,000 tag) was CHUANDONGOELURUS.   He won last month on this track and since I could find the same conditions here, why not see if we could replicate the win.  The field size turned out to be the same with 9 runners but this time some rain set in and we had conditions labeled as good.   He got away alot slower this time, trailing in 7th compared to 3rd in the previous start.  But he held things must closer as the field did not spread out as much as the prior race.  He had no problem moving to the lead at the head of the stretch.   The 5/2 second choice drew away to win by just under two strides.   25 BP’s for this one!

The third of our winners this week was TETE BISMARK (who ironically is also sired by Lope De Vega).  This was the geldings first race for the stable as we claimed him out of a $2,000 claiming race where he was third on a yielding turf race.  He was placed into another claiming race, elevated to the $17,500 level and was a co-second choice along with two others in this 8 horse field.   Early on, he relaxed into a mid-field fourth position and was looking to end a winless streak dating back to October 2017.  The streak finally concluded with a very solid win by more than two lengths and a speed of 105 in the 9.5 furlong route.   He has been consistent in hitting the board (24 of 32 races) and it was nice to get him the win in his first outing with the stable.  37 BP’s was well worth it!

A total of 92 BP’s for the three winners is excellent and the stable now has 933 on hand.   Next week we’ll have three horses set to run and look forward to getting some better card draws, but those BP’s have been accumulating nicely!