After a seemingly inexplicable break during Saturday's $750,000 Hambletonian Oaks at the Meadowlands Racetrack, trainer Richard 'Nifty' Norman has told Trot Insider that the connections now know the issue that 2009 O'Brien Award winner Poof Shes Gone was fighting

.

"She bled quite badly," Norman said about the career winner of 14 of 21 starts and $1,293,654 in purses. "She's since been put on lasix. She had a lot of blood. It was just terrible luck."

From nine starts this season, Poof Shes Gone has recorded four wins, a lone second-place finish and two thirds. Her earnings so far in 2010 ring in at $217,328, but Norman and company know that the timing of the filly's bleeding couldn't have been worse.

"It's just so disappointing because she had her best race of the year the week before," said Norman, referring to Poof Shes Gone's 1:53.1 victory in her Hambletonian Oaks elimination.

Turning the page from last weekend to the filly's next engagement, Norman told Trot Insider that the unfortunate bump in the road shouldn't affect the Poof Shes Gone's next scheduled tilt.

"Her next scheduled start is the Ontario Breeders (the eliminations for WEG's SBOA Stakes) on the 20th (August 20), so in terms of what we had scheduled for her, she shouldn't be affected."