Anyone wanna take a trotter to Europe?

Each year I assist European tracks find horses for the spring classic in Scandinavia. If you have the right trotter, it's the trip-of-a-lifetime because the tracks there treat you like visiting royalty and you'll have the time of your life.

The horses in Europe, however, will treat your trotter like a dirty rug and beat the hell out of it if your trotter isn't good enough. They play hardball in those European classics and only the best horses need apply.

Not only the best horses, but those who do not wear hobbles or rely on Lasix. Those are strictly forbidden.

And I don't ever recommend this for a mere 4-year-old. I like to see a mature horse go to Europe because he's going to be facing other mature horses and I thus think a horse must be a minimum of five years old to be competitive.

I've got a few horses in my sights for 2009, but I'll still watch them and I hope we can find good representatives from Canada or the USA to carry the colors in the Nordic countries.

And if any breeders, owners, or racing fans want to travel to Sweden to see the world-famous Elitlopp in late May, let me know because I'm working on a tour with a Swedish travel company. We took 16 from North America to the Prix d'Amerique in Paris in late January and we had a wonderful time. The weather will be a lot nicer in Stockholm in late May and the Elitlopp features the most enthusiastic and raucous crowd of racing fans I've ever seen.