Gary Kingshott figures Thepaninsulahotel deserves a shot at Ontario’s top three-year-old pacing colts in Sunday’s Gold elimination at Mohawk Racetrack, but beyond that the trainer is not making any plans
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“We’ll race him this week and see what happens from there,” says the resident of Rockwood, Ont. “I think he can do with these horses if everything goes right. We’ll give her a shot, that’s all we can do.”
Never in a rush to develop his young horses, Kingshott has invested endless amounts of patience in Thepaninsulahotel. Calling the colt attention challenged and accident prone, the trainer points out that Thepaninsulahotel’s 10-race career has followed anything but a linear path since his first qualifier in late January.
Through his first four starts the son of No Pan Intended made steady progress, recording one win, two seconds and a fourth at Woodbine Racetrack, but a trailer injury on March 9 put the young pacer out of action for two months.
“We lost like eight weeks and starting him back was like starting him all over again,” recalls Kingshott, who shares ownership on Thepaninsulahotel with Randall Bennett of Toronto, Ont. “Then we had the virus go through and lost another three weeks.”
After recovering from the trailer injury, Thepaninsulahotel qualified once and raced twice before succumbing to the virus. The colt finished second in an April 27 qualifier at Mohawk, then delivered a third-place finish in a May 4 overnight event and a lacklustre eighth-place effort on May 10.
Since his second return to action in late June, Thepaninsulahotel finished sixth and fourth in the first two legs of the Summertime Pacing Series, then came up with a smart 1:52.4 victory at Mohawk on July 13. That effort earned the young pacer a berth in the July 18 Canadian Breeders Championship eliminations, but a break behind the gate knocked the colt out of contention before he had a chance to test his skills against the nation’s best.
“Right now I think he just needs to race, for his mind, that’s what he needs. He needs to go to the box and learn to be a racehorse,” says Kingshott. “Some horses figure it out in two starts, but I think it’s going to take him 25 starts before he figures out ‘I’m here to race.’
“He gets to the lead — and it’s not like he was on the front, he was coming off cover — but he’d get to the lead and go, ‘Oh, there’s the grandstand. Oh, there’s a lot of people here today,’” adds the trainer, with a laugh. “And the other horses were trying to win.”
Campbellville, Ont. resident Jack Moiseyev will steer Thepaninsulahotel from Post 6 in the first of three $40,000 Gold eliminations on Sunday, and in spite of the colt’s checkered history, Kingshott does not expect a repeat of the break that knocked the youngster out of the action in the Canadian Breeders elimination.
“Randy (Waples) said he hit the gate,” explains Kingshott. “He touched the gate and it probably spooked him.
“He’s like an accident waiting to happen,” adds the horseman. “He bruised his ankle when he made the break, so he got a few days off.”
Since three weeks have passed since the colt’s last solid outing, Kingshott intends to give him a tightener over his farm track on Thursday. Then the trainer and Bennett will cross their fingers and hope Thepaninsulahotel can concentrate long enough to find his way into the August 9 Gold final. The top three finishers, plus one fourth-place finisher drawn by lot, will earn a return invitation to Mohawk for the $130,000 Gold final.
The elimination battles are scheduled for Races 3, 6 and 9 on Sunday, with Mohawk Racetrack’s first race rolling in behind the starting gate at 7:30 pm.
Click here to view the harness racing entries for Sunday at Mohawk.
(OSS)