Trot Insider was first to report that 2018 Ontario Sires Stakes Super Final winner and highly-touted sophomore pacer Keystone Concrete passed away on Saturday, March 9 at Woodbine Mohawk Park.
The loss of the Bettors Delight colt has left trainer Rob Fellows and owners Yolanda Fellows, Arpad Szabo and Blair Corbeil heartbroken. The bay had assembled a sparkling 5-2-0 record from his seven freshman starts and had banked $214,850 in earnings during his inaugural season. The sky appeared to be the limit for the colt, but, ultimately, he was taken from the industry and those who loved him far too soon.
"He was a storybook horse,” Rob Fellows has told the Hamilton Spectator. Keystone Concrete took his lifetime mark of 1:52 in the 2018 OSS Super Final when he knocked off divisional rivals Stag Party, Bettors Wish and Bronx Seelster as an 11-1 upsetter.
Fellows has explained that acquiring Keystone Concrete at the Standardbred Horse Sales Co.'s yearling sale in Harrisburg, Pa. in November of 2017 was just meant to be – it couldn’t have been scripted any better.
“I bought him as a yearling in Pennsylvania for $18,000, but actually preferred another yearling that was going to sell two spots later in the auction,” Fellows has told the Hamilton Spectator. “Both were sons of Bettors Delight and that is what we were shopping for. But he came along first and he was ours."
Fellows has said that he and Keystone Concrete had went a training mile in 2:35 on March 9 at Woodbine Mohawk Park and that at the end of the mile the colt just pulled up and collapsed.
“It is still all surreal to me,” said Fellows, who went on to explain that an autopsy was performed on Keystone Concrete, the contents of which are pending.
(With files from the Hamilton Spectator)