After having enjoyed a little time off, harness racing’s richest horse of all time, 14-year-old pacer Foiled Again, is back in training and preparing to resume his quest for career win No. 100. Foiled Again, whose most recent race was March 8 at Yonkers Raceway, is expected to qualify later this month.
For his career, Foiled Again has won 99 of 309 races and earned $7.57 million. Only 14 pacers have reached 100 wins in the past 40 years and few in that group competed at the level of Foiled Again, who has 21 stakes wins worth at least $100,000 to his credit. Of the pacers in the 100-win club, only Hall of Famer Rambling Willie (128 victories) and Pilgrims Fiery (106) earned more than $1 million in their careers.
Foiled Again is one of only two horses, along with Rambling Willie, to receive three consecutive Dan Patch Awards for best older male pacer. In 2011, at the age of seven, Foiled Again was pacer of the year south of the border. He is the only pacer older than the age of four ever to receive the honour.
In 2013, at the age of nine, he won the Breeders Crown Open Pace to become the oldest horse to win a Breeders Crown event. In addition to his victory in the Breeders Crown, Foiled Again’s career triumphs include the Canadian Pacing Derby, Ben Franklin Pace, TVG Free For All Series Championship, George Morton Levy Memorial Pacing Series, Bobby Quillen Memorial, and Molson Pace.
Foiled Again’s accomplishments and popularity were acknowledged beyond harness racing in 2015 when he was honoured by Breyer with a model created in his likeness.
“I think it’s because he overachieves,” trainer Ron Burke said about Foiled Again’s popularity. “There have been how many more horses that were more talented, but he ended up putting them away. He just kept going on.
“He never was a super high-speed horse that beat them with talent, he beat them with heart and determination. I think that’s what resonates with people. With Twitter, any time the horse does anything, I get more interaction than any horse. It just never stops. It is a big deal.”
Foiled Again is owned by Burke Racing, the Weaver Bruscemi partnership, and JJK Stables.
(USTA)