A Night Of Firsts

OK folks I have good news and news that isn't as good as the good news...

The mediocre news first, I put two of my seven mounts on the run tonight at Teivo Racetrack in Tampere! One of them was another Finnish coldblood, and he was actually a beautiful horse. It was another vault start, but the best part was that I landed on the lead in the first turn! I couldn't believe my luck when that happened so I pressed on and took on all comers!

You have to see these coldbloods to believe it. Most of them can't trot an eighth in 20 seconds, what's worse is that they will gallop like antelopes if you give them any amount of rein at all!!!!! Anyway we were trotting past the stable area on the second turn (on the front lol) when my coldblood decided that since this was his first lifetime start that he had had enough of me already and headed towards the gate!!!! I managed somehow to correct his path and amazingly he stayed trotting..at least for two more steps when he decided to just run and have me pulling at hair on my head that wasn't there because of my already slow start in Finland!

So, the good news, after I got him back trotting we finished third! A minor victory in my mind. It turns out that it was a field of inexperienced coldbloods and pretty much the entire field, save for the winner and second place finisher, made breaks. I guess it just took a driver that was very experienced with breaking horses to get back to trotting quickly...

I got a facebook message from Blair Burgess after my second blog, and if you didn't know that we had won major harness races and owned a horse together, you may think that he really didn't like me. He said things like trotting hopples, and Prix D'Amerique without JJ and patience and the like. I guess it was a pep-talk but it felt like abuse! Anyway, it might have worked, as I won two of the seven that I drove tonight, and also became (Ive been told) the first North American driver to win with a coldblood!!!! I've got to say that the first win really felt great and was also special because all the drivers in the race congratulated me after. That may seem silly but I know they all saw the angst in my face the first two days of racing.

In the first win, I had the 8 hole and was lucky to get away third over after a few breakers got out of the way. I found myself having to be three wide and driving hard around the last turn and into the stretch as we battled the race leader and just got up at the wire for a neck decision! I had been having a great night with three thirds and a fourth as well as a out of the money breaker early on.

The coldblooded victory came in the last race of the night and may have been one of the most important wins in my international career. You need to understand what it takes to drive one of these animals. Consider pulling on a barn as a frame of reference, and then imagining that if you let up a little on the lines that the barn could fall down...that's what its like!!! I moved this guy three wide down the backstretch and sucked a tooth and locked my heels in the stirrups. We overtook horses around the turn and headed the leader in mid stretch! At this point I wanted to loosen the lines a bit and snap the whip on his ass once or twice, but after having put so many of them on the run this trip, I simply yelled like a school girl and held on for dear life as we headed for the wire. We got there first and were turned around heading back to the winners circle within 20 meters of the wire! You have to realize that these horses rarely beat a mile rate of 2:15 so when you go 2100 meters or two laps of a 5/8 mile track they are going pretty slow late in the race and would rather just switch to the gallop than keep at their work.

Tomorrow brings more media attention as Fintoto (Finland's version of the CPMA) has me scheduled for four interviews and one experience - I am taking the lead host of Finland's #1 TV channel on a tandem ride on the jog cart. I have done 10 such interviews since I've been here and have been featured in newspapers and Finnish magazines since arriving last Friday. I am just one of the many marketing ideas and promotions Tero Vienenon of Fintoto has planned for Finnish Trotting, and I shall update you on some innovative ideas he has brought to harness racing here in my next blogs.