The sun shines bright on the Delaware fairgrounds

Published: September 17, 2008 07:48 pm EDT

Okay, don’t blame me. I’m not responsible.

When I wrote a blog item a week about the “calm before the storm” at the Delaware County Fairgrounds in Ohio, I was using the expression only in a figurative sense.

I certainly had no premonition that a stepchild of Hurricane Ike would blow through Ohio on Sunday taking limbs and power lines with it. In the process the Delaware fairgrounds was left without power and many residents in the area still don’t have electric service.

But they’re racing in Delaware now and that’s what we came to see.

I’m sitting in the Delaware press box as I write these lines and you couldn’t ask for a nice day than we’re enjoying now. And they promise that tomorrow - Jug Day - will be even nicer.

It was dark when I arrived at the fairgrounds this morning because the traditional Mayor’s Breakfast begins at 7 a.m. This year’s honoree was Dr. J. Glen Brown, the longtime head honcho at the powerful Armstrong breeding operation in Ontario. The Armstrong family was there in force to pay tribute to Dr. Brown, including Charlie Armstrong, a previous Mayor’s Breakfast honoree himself.

I just watched a dandy battle among 10 freshman trotting fillies. Trond Smedshammer entered five fillies and they went to the post as 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, and 1D. The winner was Sugarcane Yankee, a filly from the first crop by Windsong’s Legacy out of the dam of Strong Yankee. John Campbell gave her a nice trip and she did the rest in the 2:01 mile.

The favourite among tomorrow’s Juggers is Art Official and I had a nice chat today with his trainer Joe Seekman. He told me that the colt is feeling super and eating great.

He blew him out a trip around 2:25 yesterday and he said that the colt handled the turns without a hitch. Needless to say, Seekman was thrilled that Art Official got the rail in his elimination.

Art Official was 0-for-15 last year and Seekman writes that off by saying the colt was immature and not into the game mentally at times.

“He wasn’t real good-gaited at times last year,” says Seekman. “He was struggling. I could tell when he trained back early this year that he was going to have a good year, so we kept him in the North America Cup and Meadowlands Pace.”

Art Official supplemented to the Cane Pace at Freehold, which he won, and that got him a ticket to the Jug.

Seekman dismisses any talk that a Jug win would be tainted since Somebeachsomewhere skipped the Delaware classic.

“I’ve still got 17 horses to beat,” he said. “The owners of those horses didn’t pay $6,000 just to go around the track and have fun. They’ve all got a shot of winning. Some of them probably wish they’d drawn better, but that’s racing.”

And it should be a great day of racing tomorrow.

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