You always remember your first
How the Svanstedts and a trotter from a pacing mare gave Meadowlands owner Jeff Gural his first Hambletonian triumph on the race’s 100th birthday.
by Dave Briggs
On Hambletonian Day in 2024, 11 days after making a horse trade for a 10 per cent share of a 2-year-old trotting colt out of a pacing mare, Jeff Gural stood in the winner’s circle at his Meadowlands Racetrack and boldly predicted that very horse would deliver him his first Hambletonian.
A year later, as trainer, driver and primary owner Ake Svanstedt pulled away in the stretch with Nordic Catcher S to win the 100th edition of the Grade 1 $1 million Hambletonian in a 1:50 record, Gural turned chalk white as his prophecy came true.
“I was shocked because I thought we were going to win around the last turn,” Gural said. “I said, ‘Holy s – – -, he’s going to win.’”
Last year on Hambletonian Day, beyond winning the New Jersey Sires Stakes final with Nordic Catcher S so impressively that it spurred Gural to predict future greatness, the owner also won his first Hambletonian Oaks with Svanstedt trained and driven Warrawee Michelle.
But all of that is old news now after Nordic Catcher S, the 9-2 third choice, won the Hambletonian surprisingly easily (watch the full race replay here) against a competitive field.
For Svanstedt, a third Hambletonian victory in eight years – two of them with horses that have pacing blood and all three with him in the sulky — was almost showing off.
He was completely unphased two years ago about spending $35,000 to purchase the first trotting-bred son out of a Somebeachsomewhere mare — from a sale in Sweden, no less — and then shipping the son of Six Pack out of That Woman Hanover from the Sweden International Yearling Sale at Solvalla across the pond to chase Hambletonian dreams.
Why not? Four years ago, Svanstedt drove Captain Corey to victory in the 2021 Hambletonian. The sire of Captain Corey’s sire, Googoo Gaagaa, is pacer Cam’s Rocket.
Svanstedt’s wife and training partner, Sarah, said don’t let all this exotic blood talk fool you. She said it is both profoundly difficult and tremendously exciting to win the Hambletonian no matter how you do it.
“You try to be in all those big races, but there’s a lot of work behind it and it’s not always fun,” Sarah said. “You have injuries, you have sick horses and bad posts. We had a horrible winter and it was not easy to do the training that we wanted to do. So, we were actually a little bit behind on our schedule this year.
“So, I’m very proud [to win this].”
Gural joked he is the Svanstedts’ lucky charm and Sarah didn’t disagree.
Late Saturday afternoon (Aug. 2), as the sun of a perfect New Jersey summer day began to head for the exits, Gural essentially presented the Hambletonian trophy to himself beneath an arch of flowers celebrating the race’s centenary.
“I kept saying that it would be nice to give it to myself and here we are,” Gural said, reflecting on his remarkable journey from life-long harness racing fan to owner of The Meadowlands, a berth in the Hall of Fame and now, Hambletonian-winning owner.
“I could never have envisioned owning The Meadowlands,” Gural said when asked what his younger self would have thought to see this day. “I used to come here and I would give Patty Olson $5 to let me sit in the owners’ box section… Then, on Hambletonian Day, it was really hard for her to give us seats because it was the last day of the meet, so I’d give her $50 or $100 because it wasn’t that easy to find a seat in the owner’s box. They had some rule that if you were not there by the third race, then they are not coming.”
Gural said owning horses began as a way to enhance his betting. Today, it’s the part of the business he loves most.
“I wanted to own horses so I could get into the paddock and get inside information,” he said. “That’s what everybody thought back in the day, but I never envisioned owning three racetracks and The Meadowlands, so it’s really a shock.”
Gural said he acquired a piece of Nordic Catcher S by trading a piece of a promising colt named Situationship to Ake.
“Ake wasn’t an owner of Situationship and we thought that he was going to be a Hambletonian horse,” Gural said. “Ake wanted to drive him, so he said, ‘I need you to sell me a piece of Situationship.’ So, I said, ‘Well, I’ll trade you for a piece of Nordic Catcher.’”
Sadly, Situationship subsequently died, but the rest is Hambletonian history — as is Nordic Catcher S’s mile.
The 1:50 stakes record, bested the previous record of 1:50.1 shared by 2020 winner Ramona Hill and the 2009 champ Muscle Hill, who greeted fans much of the day in a makeshift paddock on the tarmac.
It was almost like he was passing the torch.
MELANDER NOT AS LUCKY
That the Svanstedts have now won the Hambletonian by disqualification (2017 Perfect Spirit), with a trotter whose fraternal grandfather is a pacer (Captain Corey) and now one whose mama is a pacer, proves their talent — and also their good fortune.
Consider fellow trainer and fellow Swede Marcus Melander, who has not been as lucky.
Melander had four horses in Saturday’s final and finished second (Super Chapter, Yannick Gingras), third (with favorite Maryland, Dexter Dunn), sixth (Meshuggah, Bjorn Goop, making his Hambletonian debut) and 10th (Blank, Andrew McCarthy).
It is the fourth time Melander has finished second in the Hambletonian in seven years and the third time he has finished both second and third.
This year was also the fourth time Gingras has finished second in the race. Though, he did orchestrate an epic win last year with Karl in a torrential downpour.
Meanwhile, Ake’s legacy grows. He is now the sixth person in Hambletonian history to both train and drive at least three champions — which is saying something in an era when trainer/drivers are heading toward extinction.
ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS
That this year’s Hambletonian was so unique in its 100th edition is fitting, of course. The race’s history is filled with unique stories, so why not one where the owner of the racetrack where the race was held wins the race for the first time and presents the sport’s greatest trophy to himself after the first trotter out of a pacing mare storms to victory?
As for why Nordic Catcher S’s part-breeder Jan-Peter Hansen of Sweden’s Nordic Horse Farm Ab bred a pacing mare to a trotter, there is a surprisingly simple answer despite the fact That Woman Hanover produced all pacers before the Hambletonian winner, including two with earnings over $100,000.
“The pacer is stronger and we decided, ‘Let’s try it,’” Hansen said in the winner’s circle. “I don’t know if it’s a trend, but it was worth a try… and it’s worked great.”
Sarah Svanstedt agreed. She said pacers can add a degree of toughness to a trotter, “because pacers are so mentally tough.”
At the same time, the late legend Somebeachsomewhere has added yet another accomplishment to a resume that is many pages long – he is now the grandsire of a Hambletonian winner.
Still, it was all a bit of an experiment.
Never mind the pacing part, Hansen, who shares Nordic Catcher S’s breeding credit with Joie De Vie Farm LLC of Jobstown, NJ, said he is shocked to have produced a Hambletonian winner just “five or six years” after he started breeding horses. He said he only produces about five or six horses a year and That Woman Hanover’s latest foal was sired by Walner.
“This is very, very big for me,” he said of winning the Hambletonian. “This will be really huge for me.”
Sarah said she had some concerns that Nordic Catcher S might have difficulty learning to trot as a baby, but he, “absolutely never paced.”
That the Svanstedts campaigned Six Pack makes the Hambletonian victory extra special, Sarah said.
“[Nordic Catcher S] is very much like [Six Pack],” she said. “He’s laid back and easy with everything.”
Asked what she loves about her newest Hambletonian champ, Sarah quickly rhymed off the reasons.
“Number one, he’s fast,” she said. “Number two, he’s strong. Number three, he has a great personality.”
That Nordic Catcher S is New Jersey-sired in a state where Gural has tried to keep harness racing alive isn’t lost on the owner. Though, he admits he didn’t even see Nordic Catcher S win his Hambletonian elimination on July 26 until two hours later due to disappointment with how other horses of his raced that day.
“I watched some Netflix and I watched the news and baseball. Then I said, ‘Let’s see how Nordic Catcher did,’ and he won,” Gural said with surprise.
Not that it increased his optimism for the final.
“Honestly, in this business, the worst thing that can happen is when you expect to win and then you lose,” he said. “It’s much better when you don’t expect to win and you win.”
He’s forgetting about his prognostication a year ago, of course. Chock it up to the shock of it all.
“Truthfully, Sarah Svanstedt said to me last year after we won the Oaks, ‘I owe you one Hambletonian, and then we’ve done everything,’” Gural said. “And she’s right – 3-year-old Breeders Crown, 2-year-old Breeders Crown, the Oaks and now the Hambletonian.
“It’s nice to win when there are a lot of people [at the track]. It’s been an amazing day. The weather was so nice, and it brought out a huge crowd.”
So much so that Gural found himself stuck in so much traffic as he approached The Meadowlands that he decided to jump out and walk the rest of the way. When the octogenarian got tired of walking, a bus pulled up and took him aboard for the rest of the journey.
“It was all Swedes on a junket from Sweden,” Gural said, adding that they told him, “Ake thinks your horse has a good shot.’ I said, ‘Great.’ When I got off the bus, they asked, ‘Can we take a picture with you? You’re a big celebrity in Sweden.’”
Jeff Gural was an even bigger one by the end of the day.
