Sorry for the delayed post. A fourth and a third place finish over the past weekend weren’t exactly what we had hoped for. Lovely Tak simply got too far back and had too much ground to make up. High Spirit suffered a very tough trip and was obviously much better than his third place finish. He was capable of finishing second for certain and possibly winning. However, it is part of the game.
The plan is to try to run both of these back once more during the meet. Lovely Tak was entered today in a $3,500 non-winners of two races in the year and it drew three entries. It’s coming back tomorrow for $5,000 and may draw more interest. We will keep you posted.
High Spirit is likely being pointed to a race on closing day. There is a one mile and three eighth turf race in the condition book on Monday, September 3rd. Clay hopes to run him back in that spot to get him additional ground and give him a little more rest.
Great Bam is headed to the track tomorrow – weather permitting – to truly test his fitness level. Clay told us that this work will determine when he will be able to run. The works as of late have been slower by design to get him back into the swing of things and this one will be meant to seriously test his fitness level.
As the meet winds down, we’ll need to start to discuss how to disburse, or at least reduce, the stable. Depending on how Great Bam and High Spirit respond in the next couple of days, they are the most likely to be competitive in Chicago. Lovely Tak is probably not quite at the level required to compete at Hawthorne; thus, she’s the most likely to be sold first.
She has been running at the bottom level, $3,500 claiming, and the new owner will need to ship her somewhere (most likely Turf Paradise) where she can be competitive. Thus, we’ll have to expect to get significantly less than $3,500 for her. Hopefully, we can sell her to a trainer heading to Turf Paradise for somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000.
We’ll also need to decide what to do with the other runners in the coming weeks. We will talk with Clay, find out more about his plans for the fall regarding when he wants to ship, etc and will come back and provide more information for the group.
Canterbury Racing Club 
It sure seems like Lovely Tak is a better horse at 6 1/2 than she is at 6 based on the time we’ve owned her.
Probably true. Unfortunately, that isn’t a distance that comes up that frequently. We’d prefer to run at the distance if we could.
I wonder if Bryan Porter might be interested in Lovely Tak. I spoke with him briefly last Thursday night, and he said he was headed to San Antonio for the winter after the Canterbury meet concludes.
Not a bad person to ask James. Good suggestion. Will add him to the list.
This sure has been fun. I’m hoping we do keep the two and continue on for a bit.
Lovely Tak is a pretty little mare, nicely put together. She could possibly excel in another discipline.
To be fair to Tak, she’s a decent enough race horse. Just needs to be running at the right level to be successful. Obviously, this summer has shown the group: 1) you need to win; and 2) it’s difficult to make money when you can’t get them all on the track.
Lovely Tak gave me the thrill of a lifetime when she won. I won’t ever forget that race, the way she burst through and won going away. Thank you for fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine.
If Hawthorne is the next stop, it would be fun to drive down and watch them run down there. I would like to keep them running.
I haven’t read the agreement lately but how was it planned to wind this down after the season?
The club agreement discussed that we were considering racing until the end of 2012 unless it became prudent to cease operations sooner. The difficult part about selling immediately after this meet is that everything sells for a significant discount.
Obviously, we’ll monitor the situation and talk with Clay to figure out what he thinks is the best way to proceed.
As it seems selling the horses might become a challenge as the season comes to close would it ever be the right idea to drop the horses in class with the expected outcome being that they get claimed? The potential of one last strong finish and the payday that comes with that might be right for our group even though we don’t take any profits home. Potentially getting High Spirit in the winners circle even at a lower claiming level would be a fun way to go out.
That is an option. Traditionally, claiming slows at the end of this meet due to the fact that no one wants to spend much money to ship out.
That being said, if the right $3,500 claiming race came up for High Spirit, it wouldn’t be out of the question.