by James Platz

Breeder, owner, and trainer Peggy Grant concedes that when her horses race, she’s a nervous wreck. When her homebred 4-year-old Tom’s Muscle captured a Kentucky Sire Stakes leg earlier this month at Oak Grove Racing & Gaming, she watched from outside the paddock. As the gelded son of Long Tom sprinted to the lead racing out of the turn, she could hear others rooting for her pupil in the race’s latter stages.

“I stand outside because I get really nervous and anxious, but I could hear the people inside the paddock,” Grant said. “They were yelling ‘Come on, Tom! Go, Peggy, go!’ Everybody was so excited and congratulated me. It means a lot. I’ve raised them. I’ve bred them. I mean, you know, it’s something I’m really proud of.”

Tom’s Muscle and driver Ernie Hendry moved three-wide the second time around the Oak Grove backstretch and swept to the lead, managing to keep a head in front of late-charging favorite Ways N Means at the wire. The gelding picked the right time to collect his first seasonal score, claiming a 1:54.1 triumph in the $50,000 leg. The win pushed Tom’s Muscle’s career earnings over the $100,000 mark.

“He can motor,” Grant said. “He prances. When he gets going, he’s beautiful to watch. He throws that tail up and just trots his big butt off.”

Tom’s Muscle is a product of Grant’s breeding program, which originated with Royal T Time. She purchased the Royal Troubadour mare as a yearling in 2000, and the trotter made eight starts for trainer Jack Gray, Jr. as a sophomore, winning once. The crooked-legged filly was purchased with broodmare duties in mind, and after taking a 2:08 mark, she was bred to Garland Lobell her first two seasons. The second breeding produced Royal Garland, grandam of Tom’s Muscle. She would win four times and bank nearly $50,000 before retiring to broodmare duties. Currently, Grant has a trio of broodmares that consistently produces offspring that can trot.

“They all trot, every one of them trot,” she said. “I’ve never had any issue with trotting, it’s just, are they fast enough. You know how that is.”

Tom’s Muscle has shown he has the speed, but he’s proven a handful throughout his career.

“I really had to work with him because he’s huge on top of everything else, and he can be a handful,” the conditioner said. “When I want to train him, he doesn’t want to go the right way of the track. I’ve been working with him, with an outriding horse, and it’s working out great. My dad always told me if they’re a handful, you got a good one.”

At 2, Tom’s Muscle made eight starts. While he didn’t win as a freshman, he was first or second seven times. The only time he finished off the board was when judges had to scratch him during a fair start in Grant’s hometown of Lebanon.

“He refused the gate, kept rearing up,” she said. “And we tried him three times, and he kept refusing the gate, so they had to scratch him.”

He earned $23,267 that season, and last year he broke through to earn four victories as a sophomore. Pat Curtin steered the gelding to three wins, but Hendry took over the driving duties in mid-September, sitting behind him for the final five contests of the season. He was in the bike when Tom’s Muscle took his 1:53.3 mark in early October at The Red Mile.

“Ernie has really helped me a lot with him,” Grant said. “Last year, when Tom would jog, he’d go past a horse, and he’d take off. I went to Ernie, and I asked him, ‘Can you help me?’ He agreed. I said, ‘Now, he’s a handful.’ And he said, ‘I’m not afraid.’ He has really helped him. I mean, he’s got him to where he walks. When he goes out on the track, he’ll walk.”

Despite the toned-down demeanor, Grant still has someone walk Tom’s Muscle to the track and back to the barn in the event he decides to rear up. And while Hendry has helped alter some behaviors, the trotter still insists on going the wrong way on the track. The irony is that while he is a character on the track, he is easy going when off the racing surface.

“He’s very big, but in the barn, he minds; he doesn’t give me any trouble,” Grant said. “I graze him every day. He goes out there and munches grass, and he doesn’t want to come in. I graze him about an hour every day after he jogs, and he’s good in the barn.”

In the Kentucky Sire Stakes program Grant has a finals winner to her credit, and the trotter came from the same family. Wizard Time, a half-brother to Royal Garland, claimed the $300,000 final for freshman trotting colts in 2008, taking his 1:57.1 mark in the process. Now she has another homebred contender. He raced third and fourth in other KYSS events leading up to his win. In his six seasonal starts, he has only drawn inside of post 6 once, and that produced a victory. In Monday’s third leg, Tom’s Muscle has drawn post 5 in a six-horse field.

Grant is savoring each start with Tom’s Muscle, and his KYSS score proved both incredibly rewarding and emotionally trying.

“I’m probably not going to be able to do this very much longer because I’m getting older,” Grant said. “But I really, really, really get excited about this. I mean, I cry when he races, and hell, when he went to the test barn, I was crying and shaking. I couldn’t even get the harness off. He was prancing around and rearing up in the stall. He knew what he had done.”

Hopefully there are more thrills in store this season.