“He’s an absolute wonder horse,” said Gregg Keidel, the race secretary at Dayton Raceway. “A once-in-a-generation type horse.”
“He’s the greatest horse of his generation,” said Ron Burke, the nation’s winningest trainer, thanks in a big way to Foiled Again, who is in his stable. “In our eyes, he’s the best free-for-aller (top grade standardbred) of all time. And every year now he further pushes his case as the best ever.”
With more than $6.7 million in career earnings, Foiled Again is the richest harness horse in history. In 220 starts, he has 82 wins and has finished in the money 169 times. He’s the oldest horse to win $1 million in a season and he’s done that the past three years.
The past three years he received the Dan Patch Award given to the sport’s best older male pacer. Last year he became the oldest horse to win a Breeders Crown race. This past June he ran the fastest mile of his life, a 1:47.1 in the Ben Franklin Pace at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs. Just last month he won the $220,000 Bobby Quillen Memorial at Harrington Raceway in Delaware.
Tonight, he’s here in Dayton, part of a gala 14-race card that features the new, five-eighth mile track’s first two Grand Circuit Races — the $122,000 Dayton Pacing Derby, where he was the 9-5 morning line favorite, and the $160,000 Dayton Trotting Derby, which features Creatine, the hottest trotter in North America. He will have Xenia’s Dan Noble in the sulky.
“We purposely scheduled this for a Friday night instead of a Saturday to attract some of the best drivers and horses in North America and I’m proud to say we’ve been successful on both counts,” said Keidel.
The Pacing Derby will have four of North America’s top seven winningest drivers in Ronnie Wrenn Jr. (642 wins), Dave Palone, Josh Sutton and Yannick Gingrich, who will pilot Foiled Again. The Trotting Derby has the nation’s top two drivers as far as earnings — Gingrich (more than $13.4 million ) and Tim Tetrick.
The biggest star of the night, though, is Foiled Again. He even has a fan club and a Twitter following.
A Twitter movement — #FoiledAgainForever hashtag — was created to raise awareness of the 10-year-old star among people outside the harness racing world, and it has worked.
“We’ve had other horses who are superstars, but none who have captured the imagination like Foiled Again,” said Burke, who has over 250 horses in his Pennsylvania-based racing stable. “If he wins, Twitter blows up.”
You can’t help like Foiled Again, not just for what he does now, but for the way he beat the odds coming up.
He was bought as a $20,000 yearling by Patrick Lacey and was initially trained by Herman Heitman. The colt was quite rambunctious and unruly and ended up gelded, but after winning just eight times in his first 46 races he showed no indication he would be special.
Lacey and Heitman also had his full brother, Spoiled Again, and they chose to keep him and get rid of Foiled. Unfortunately for them, Spoiled Again was later found to have several holes in his heart and his racing career ended early. He was kept in the stable to train future veterinarians.
They sold Foiled Again to Burke for $62,500.
“No, no, we never had any idea he’d turn out like this,” Burke said with a laugh Thursday afternoon by phone. “You don’t buy a horse for $60,000 and think he’s gonna turn into the greatest horse of all time. He’s just been a complete and wonderful surprise.”
He said they found out his breeding fit their program: “He’s lazy, but he’ll do a lot of work if asked. He was a horse made for us and we were made for him.”
Since Burke has had him, Foiled Again has won more than $6.64 million, including in excess of $1.4 million last year.
He’ll ship in today from Indiana, where he last raced. Although Keidel said he gets no special treatment in the Dayton paddock, he figures he will create quite a stir.
“I’m sure the 100 or so horsemen we have in there every night will all go past his stall just to get a glimpse of him,” Keidel said.
Burke understands that. It’s like that a lot of places they go:
“People respect him. He’s a 10-year-old beating 4-year-olds. You wouldn’t expect that.”
Not from his age.
And certainly not from his name.
Schedule to expand: Thursday, the Ohio State Racing Commission approved an expanded racing schedule for Dayton Raceway in 2015. The 75-date meet will run from Sept. 14 to Dec. 30. In this inaugural season, Dayton has a 56-date schedule that concludes Dec. 27.
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