The question of whether 2010 could be the best year of a great career isn't yet on the radar screen of trainer and driver Dan Daley but just maybe it should be
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He's won with half of the first six starters from his own stable this year at his winter home base at The Isle Pompano Park as he continues to thrive on a very substantial workload every day at the South Florida Trotting Centre before he ever sees the track lights at night.
"I guess some people would consider it a big stable with 17 two-year-olds that take up most of my time," Daley says. "Of those, there's only one pacer and all told we have twenty three horses in our operation so I'm on the go seven days a week.”
The current racing entrants from Dan Daley's outfit include recent Open Pace winner Daley Deposit Only, along with trotting mares Barcelona Baby and Winbak Half. He traces his enjoyment of the breed, and specifically trotters, to his upbringing in Saratoga, New York where he first was bitten by the standardbred game at Saratoga Harness.
The career winner of almost 900 races in the bike for a purse haul of just under $9 million has certainly made his mark at the top of the game. In the recorded training statistics dating to 1991, he's conditioned 495 winners for over $7.4 million in purse earnings. His Breeders Crown starters list of the past decade, still fresh in his memory, includes Daley Deposit Only, and trotters Diamond Goal, R C Royalty, and the 1999 two-year-old colt trot champion Master Lavec.
"Daley Deposit Only was a bit of a departure for me since he was a pacer and he was a hard luck horse after he raced in the Crown as a two-year-old," Daley recalls. "It's been great to have him back in form at this Pompano meet and to win the Open Pace. Diamond Goal was a nice older trotter that made over $340,000 of his life's earnings in the span of just a few months. I owned him with the late Larry Albano who is well remembered at Pompano for his decades as a commentator and promoter of the track. R C Royalty won the Valley Victory at Woodbine and made over $600,000 for us. Probably the one I remember most though is Master Lavec."
Master Lavec was a decided underdog heading into the 1999 Breeders Crown two-year-old colt trot final at Mohawk Racetrack. He'd finished a tiring third in his elimination and had drawn post ten for the championship dash.
"He stopped on me late in the stretch in that elimination because his throat almost closed completely," Daley explains. "I was able to trace the problem to the wood shavings I was using in his stall. I made a lot of changes over the next week and he won the Breeders Crown from post ten wire-to-wire and I was on top of the world.”
As for an early scouting report on the sixteen rookie trotters he's working with this year, there are two he's especially high on.
"There a couple of the nicer colts that I've already had go in the 2:20 range, Daleys Daydream and Major Skirmish," he says. "Some would say that might be a little too much a little too soon. I tell them that's what Master Lavec was going at this time in 1999 and he went on to win the Breeders Crown."
You quickly get a sense that it's simply the love of the game, the pursuit of perfecting trotters, and the love of horses that is at the heart of Dan Daley's motivation at age 51.
"I'm just loving the life here in South Florida and there's no place better to break and train young horses because you never miss a day with them," he says. "My wife, Ann-Mari, thinks I'm a little crazy for the schedule I keep each Sunday when most folks want to relax. My routine is that after I've been to my own barn, I like to go see the hunters and jumpers or a polo match or whatever I can find where horses are involved. So long as there are horses, I'll be there."
(Pompano Park)