As the summer stakes season nears, fans of harness racing have a number of award-winning horses from 2022 that they can look forward to watching return to the racetrack in 2023. One of those standouts is 2022 Dan Patch Award winner Treacherous Dragon.

Treacherous Dragon led all three-year-old female pacers in purses in 2022 with $872,800 in earnings. She won the Fan Hanover Stakes for trainer Brett Pelling before moving to the stable of Nancy Takter, where the filly’s victories included the Breeders Crown and Jugette. The daughter of Captaintreacherous-My Little Dragon is owned by New Jersey's Hot Lead Farm.

That sophomore season for Treacherous Dragon started strong and ended strong. Takter told Trot Insider that the filly's adjustment period to the change in scenery wasn't as smooth as one would hope.

"She had to make some adjustments and then go through an environment change in the middle of the season, which is not easy for horses to do – especially not fillies. So it took a little bit of time to get her kind of set into our schedule. But she’s a super filly.

"I didn't know anything about her. I just knew she was fast. I didn't what type of training methods work on her, what issues she may or may have not had as far as lameness and bleeding or tying up or stomach... I had nothing to go on. So it took a little while to kind of get everything sorted out with her. We qualified her before the Jugette and I think that was when we kind of got everything kind of squared away with her when we were in Lexington. She really liked it down in Lexington; I mean, who doesn't? And she was good from that moment on."

A career winner of $1.17 million with a mark of 1:49.1 and a summary of 13-4-4 from 25 starts, Treacherous Dragon makes her four-year-old debut in a qualifier at The Meadowlands on Friday (April 7) with Scott Zeron listed to drive. That tandem will reacquaint themselves with a couple of familiar foes lining up directly to their outside: divisional rivals Niki Hill (PP2, Dexter Dunn) and Boudoir Hanover (PP3, Todd McCarthy). The Meadowlands Maturity is a possible target for Treacherous Dragon but Takter said that race is just that — a possible target.

"I'm not going to push her for it," said Takter, noting that she plans on qualifying the mare twice. "She trained last week up at The Meadowlands. She trained very good, and I was happy with her, so I figured I would qualify her this week, give her maybe a week off and kind of evaluate where we're at. And then if she's ready to go in that race, she's ready to go but it's not the end of the world if she's not.

"She's a very laid back, lazy horse, so she needs a little bit of racing to kind of get into form because I'm not really going to train her to form."

Form will be crucial as Treacherous Dragon enters the four-year-old and open pacing ranks in 2023. The talent pool in the open pacing mares division is as deep as ever, with award winners Test Of Faith and So Much More still on the racetrack, O'Brien Award winner Silver Label in the mix and Breeders Crown winner Grace Hill showing serious form late in her 2022 campaign. Further, none of these mares are even among those competing in the highly-competitive Blue Chip Matchmaker Series.

"It's a very solid group of open mares, especially four-year-old mares," agreed Takter. "It's very unfortunate they took away the Graduate for the four-year-old mares because I feel like there are enough mares where we could have had a good series going for that. But it's going to be a very competitive group. 

"As far as Treacherous Dragon goes competing with that group, she's a big filly, a good-sized filly, which I think plays to her favour to tackle the aged mares. It does take a little bit of time for the four-year-olds to kind of get their racing legs under them. A lot of these aged mares are just tough as nails. The racing is a little different for the aged horses. There's not as many breathers and so forth, so it takes a little bit of adjustment on their part and growing up and maturity and so forth. But I see no reason why she shouldn't handle it so well. Besides being obviously a very talented and fast filly, she's very, very handy. If she needs to leave, she can leave. If she needs to race off the pace, she can do that and that's going to play to her favour. It's definitely going to be an interesting year. There are some nice horses returning. I think she'll to do just fine for herself."

To view the entries for Friday's qualifiers in PDF program format, click here.