by Ron Gurfein

First of all, I must apologize for giving breeding credit to the wrong party. Last week I said that the breeder of Force And Fury was Marvin Katz it was actually White Birch farm. That said, it was about 25 degrees warmer Saturday morning this week than last week. The turnout was not that improved due to the holiday season. The Antonacci family made their first appearance of the year and Gerry Glantz returned to his familiar Saturday morning spot after missing a few weeks due to minor surgery. Nancy Johansson made a surprise visit, but for the most part there were the usual suspects.

Thanks to Murray Brown no one on the deck this morning went away hungry. Murray asked me to pick the best colt or filly right now, but I felt it was way too early to start making predictions, especially considering much of the power of the Lindy group are still in Connecticut and I have never seen them on the track. That group includes a beautiful Western Ideal filly from the Art Museum and a colt by Father Patrick out of the great mare Passionate Glide among many others.

The most impressive set I saw this morning was a pair of colts from the Fred Grant barn. Powerplay Goal a Muscle Mass out of Finesse Hanover (his name was Flammable Hanover) and Oxford Hall an EL Titan from On With The Show finished noses apart with a stylish last eighth of a mile. The EL Titan interestingly was an RNA for Alan Leavitt for $140,000 and partially syndicated to a group of familiar faces including Bill Donovan, John Fodera, Steve Wienick, Jeff Gural, Donald Latore, Joe Sbrocco, Daniel Plouffe and last, but certainly not least, my friend Trish Truesdale. Good luck at those decision-making meetings.

Another nice pairing from the Grant Stable was Test Match and Mouse Circus, the former a filly by Andover Hall—Widdershins, the latter a filly by Sebastian K—Product Placement.

My good friend Nick Salvi made an on track appearance with the good Trixton colt I mentioned last week out of Zeta Jones, called Amos Hart from Paul Kelley’s outfit. He is a man amongst boys (Amos, not Nick).

I really liked a beautiful filly, Gracie Lane, from the Casie Coleman stable. Her husband, Mark Herlihy, was doing the driving on this great-gaited lass. He informed me that the Bettors Delight—Electric Fool offspring was selected and purchased by Crawford Farm and then given to them to train.

The Alagna Barn was in full swing again this morning with a plethora of fabulous youngsters. Honorat Hanover, the $400,000 Captaintreacherous from Hana Hanover certainly looked the part this morning. He was in a set with Betterthanthebeach a Somebeachsomewhere out of My Little Delight, another very interesting colt.

On the filly side, Tony’s barn had some very nice prospects. I was particularly enamoured with Rose Run Vanessa, a slick gaited He’s Watching filly from Mrs American Pie and Lady Lou a Sweet Lou out of Bolt of Thunder.

Captain Kirk, Captaintreacherous—Aria Hanover still remains the King in the Alagna barn he has such an amazing presence on the track. I loved Captain Ahab this time last year and think that Captain Kirk could well be this years version.

Karmas Delight, a filly by Captaintreacherous from the great mare Darlins Delight, dam of the million-dollar winning Darlinonthebeach looked like a smaller version of her sister. Esai Hanover and Surf The Web were another nice pair of colts from Tony’s barn — the former by Artspeak—Easy Go Go and the latter Captaintreacherous—Donna Lee.

From Lindy Farm I spotted a talented trio of colts, Unnamed Ready Cash—Highscore Kemp, Hi West (Cantab Hall—Define Royalty) and Pastor Lindy a Father Patrick out of Lindy Crazy Dolly.

Many of the colts and fillies have been better than three minutes in the next few weeks I will start bringing my watch to work.

Thanks for all the kind words. The first edition of the Good the Bad and The Ugly was mostly successful. I would say I had 5 per cent bad remarks — most of which were complaining about the absence of one horse or another. I only had so much space and I felt what I covered was my opinion of the story. I’m sorry if I offended anyone by omitting their horse, but if I copied and pasted the results of the harness writers’ selections no one would have read it. Have a wonderful New Year.