Plan B paying off for Gladden and breeder Duane Miller

by James Platz

Duane Miller is accustomed to rooting for horses bred, raised, and sold each season by his family-owned Legacy Lane Farm. This summer, however, he has had greater interest in a trotting filly battling in the state’s top program at Harrah’s Hoosier Park Racing & Casino. Temporal Hanover freshman Gladden is in the thick of Indiana Sires Stakes competition, and Miller is not just the breeder, he’s a co-owner experiencing the thrills of the game.

“There’s more at stake, and I don’t know, it nerves me up more,” Miller said. “When they post parade or go to the gate, until after the race is over, it’s about all I can handle.”

Miller’s involvement in Gladden’s racing career speaks less to his interest in being an owner and more to circumstances beyond his control. In this case, bad circumstances early in the trotter’s young life that limited the breeder’s options. Had things gone according to plan, the dual-eligible filly would have sold early in last year’s Midwest Standardbred Horse Sale, but that plan didn’t quite pan out.

“As a weanling, this filly cut her knee right on top of the kneecap on a feeder,” he said. “And it healed kind of ugly, like it got scar tissue in it, but not bad. You’d look at it and say it’s not bad. Come yearling sale time, I took her down to [Caesars Entertainment Equine Specialty Hospital] and had it x-rayed, and they said it’s just scar tissue, it’s topical. Nothing that’s going to affect the horse. So, I went and entered her in the sale, and prepped her, and a couple days before the sale, I looked at that and said, ‘Man, they’re going to kill me for that knee.’ You know, that first impression, you looked at it, it was a big knee.”

Besides being eligible to both Indiana and Kentucky, Gladden is the first foal from Muscle Mass mare Pleaspleaspleas, a sister to near-millionaire Judge Joe and Creme De Cocoa. Miller was not interested in seeing the filly highly discounted at the sale due to the imperfection, but he didn’t have a plan B, either. After calling around and speaking with multiple trainers, there were no takers for Gladden. Despite the clean x-ray, few wanted to take a chance on a filly they felt had been injured. Enter trainer Jeff Cullipher.

“After we came home from Harrisburg, Jeff Cullipher was bringing over some horses,” Miller said. “We do a lot of turnouts for him. He brought a load of turnouts up, and I asked him, ‘You get what you wanted at the sale?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, pretty much. But I’m still looking for a trotting filly.’”

Miller and Cullipher went to the field to inspect Gladden and her big knee, and in the moment, the breeder went off script.

“Jeff looked at her, and he said, ‘Duane, that doesn’t bother me a bit,’” Miller said. “For whatever reason, I say, ‘Hey, I would stay in on half.’ I normally don’t do that.”

A partnership was born. Now in the Cullipher barn, Gladden trained down over the winter and into the spring, and the breeder/co-owner received promising reports from his partner on the filly.

“Jeff said this filly’s the real deal,” Miller said. “All winter training down, he told me, this filly’s fast.”

After successfully qualifying at Hoosier Park, she entered the opening leg of Indiana Sires Stakes, where she made three breaks and finished a distant sixth. In a subsequent qualifier, she also made a miscue, but returned three days later to register a clean line in another qualifying effort. With past performances that showed breaks, Gladden was sent off at odds of 28-1 in a $67,500 division of the second round of INSS action July 25. Steered by Atlee Bender, the freshman raced off the pace early and rocketed home in :26.4 to score a head victory, trotting the mile in 1:56.4.

“With that $30,000 she made, that’s probably more than she would have brought at the sale,” Miller said. “And I still own the filly.”

In the two rounds that have followed, Gladden has collected a pair of runner-up performances and has been race timed in 1:56.1. She enters Tuesday’s (Sept. 1) fifth leg with $67,000 on her card and ranks third in divisional points with only two preliminary rounds left before the $250,000 Super Final in October. Tuesday night, Gladden will start from the second tier (post 10) in the $67,500 second split, carded as race 12 on the program. She will be steered by Trace Tetrick, Hoosier Park’s leading driver and pilot in her last two attempts.

“It’s been a fun little ride, and yeah, we’ll see,” Miller said. “But Jeff is high on her. He says, ‘Duane, I told you, if she just minds her manners, she’s fast.’”

This isn’t the plan the breeder envisioned for himself or Gladden, but the impromptu plan B might just produce a better result.