Big win in Florida for Melnyk horse
What a productive week it’s been for the Ottawa Senators and noted thoroughbred owner Eugene Melnyk.
Four days before the Senators acquired defenceman Dion Phaneuf from the Maple Leafs to (in theory) help the team’s playoff push, Melnyk’s homebred Lukes Alley scored a big win in the US$350,000 Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Handicap in Hallandale Beach, Fla.
The six-year-old son of Flower Alley — who gave Melnyk many wins before moving on to stallion duty — has finished first or second in 12 of his past 13 starts, an impressive record of endurance.
In his latest score last Saturday, Lukes Alley took the lead in the final stride of the Gulfstream Park stretch to win a race that included well-regarded The Pizza Man for the biggest win of his career.
“It was close. This is a gutsy horse,” said Josie Carroll, Lukes Alley’s trainer. “I knew he’d go down fighting if he lost. This is a horse that always shows up.”
Even more gratifying for Melnyk and Carroll was that it was the first Grade 1 test for Lukes Alley, a Sovereign Award winner in 2014. His first win on turf followed up a pair of stakes wins over Woodbine’s synthetic surface last fall.
“I was confident he’d run his race and we were lucky enough to win it,” Carroll said. “He’s a very, very honest horse and I think he really deserves this.”
The horse earned $210,490 to boost his career bankroll to $758,956 from 14 career starts. Though Melnyk significantly downsized his thoroughbred holdings recently, he has retained a number of horses. And based on his most recent appearance, it doesn’t look like Lukes Alley is going anywhere soon.
NYQUIST ( THE HORSE) RETURNS
The much-anticipated threeyear-old debut of early Kentucky Derby favourite Nyquist is slated for Monday at Santa Anita Park in the seven-furlong San Vicente Stakes.
Owned by Windsor, Ont., native Paul Reddam (who won the 2012 Derby with I’ll Have Another), Nyquist is coming off a champion twoyear-old campaign highlighted by a big victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.
Since then, the colt — who Reddam named after Detroit Red Wings star Gustav Nyquist — has been training like a champ as well, leading to optimistic anticipation from trainer Doug O’Neill.
“He’s got so much class, so much raw ability,” O’Neill said this week. “It’s hard to believe that he’s any more mature than last year but he’s doing everything right and thriving on training
“He’s doing super. So far, so good.”
HOT TO TROT
The best in Canadian harness racing will be honoured at Saturday’s O’Brien Award ceremonies in Mississauga, Ont., and trainer Richard Moreau could make history.
After a dominant year on the Woodbine/ Mohawk circuit, Moreau is a finalist for the toptrainer award. If victorious, he will become the first to capture the honour for three consecutive years.
The top-trainer category is one of the more interesting this year, in that it features a pair of finalists with drastically different business models. Moreau is an everyday guy at Canada’s two biggest tracks, leading all trainers in 2015 with 271 wins.
By contrast, fellow finalist Jimmy Takter led all trainers in Canadian earnings (more than $4 million) but did so by shipping in superstar horses from his New Jersey base to compete in lucrative stakes races here. In fact, besides his own nomination, four Taktertrained horses are O’Brien finalists in their respective categories.
“You don’t know how (voters are) going to assess it,” Moreau told Standardbred Canada’s Trot Insider. “Maybe they don’t want to give it to the same person all the time, either. Even if I don’t win, I appreciate being in the same category as Mr. Takter, who’s in a class apart.”