Trainer Dirk Simpson wasn’t surprised at Our Dragon King winning the American-National Stakes at 22-1 odds from Post 8 last Saturday.
So, it stands to reason he might be pretty confident starting at post four in Friday’s $110,000 Abe Lincoln Stakes at Chicago’s Maywood Park.
“I think he should be just fine,” said Simpson of the six-horse race. “It’s a short field, which is going to be in our favour. It’s pretty much the same horses (as the American-National). If Brian (Carpenter) gets away in good shape, I don’t think the turns will be too much of an issue for us because he’s trained on a half-mile track in the wintertime.
“It seems like he came out of the race last week just fine, so we hope it should be another good race for us.”
Despite the fact Our Dragon King faced long odds at Balmoral Park, he won by 1-1/2 lengths in a lifetime best 1:52.2 over Blatantly Best, who will also be in the Lincoln Stakes.
“I don’t want to sound overconfident, but it wasn’t totally unexpected for me or the owners,” Simpson said. “We kind of knew the horse was capable of that.
“He trained real good and seemed as sharp as he had been all year. But you never know until you race. It worked out real well.”
What surprised most onlookers, is that Our Dragon King had not been getting the best results leading up to the race.
The two-year-old gelding pacer, owned by Illinois-based Desyllas Racing, William Beck and Carol Rieken, has won six of 14 races with three second-place finishes. He has earned $224,148, but had been finishing off the board leading into the American-National.
After finishing fifth in his debut, Our Dragon King won four straight, including divisions of the Hanover Stakes, Pennsylvania Sire Stakes and Arden Downs. He raced his first three starts for Simpson, then went to Sam DePinto to race in Pennsylvania and Lexington.
He finished seventh in a division of the Bluegrass Stakes and fifth in a division of the International Stallion Stakes at Lexington’s Red Mile. He then was eighth in the Circle City Stakes at Indiana Downs on Oct. 27, which was the start prior to the American-National.
In the Circle City, he started from post nine and never got into the race. He was eighth for most of the mile. But Simpson felt the performances didn’t reflect the potential, as Our Dragon King was less than 100 percent.
“He won the Hanover so we sent him out to Sam DePinto and he got along real well with him,” Simpson said. “When Sam brought him to Lexington, he just had some shipping issues and got a little bit of a cold and congested. He could never get his air real well down there. And going back-to-back weeks, there wasn’t a lot of time to get healed up at all.
“At Circle City he was just as sharp there as he was (in the American-National). He drives like a car and he likes to leave; you just need to get him in the race. He never got in the race and just followed along there. They went to the half in :57(.1) and a mile in 1:53(.4) so you’ve got to be up a little tighter than that. You can't be following last against those horses. We just didn’t have any racing luck at all.”
Simpson has enjoyed Our Dragon King from the start. After castrating him early, the trainer said there have been no real issues.
“He’s been a real easy horse,” Simpson said. “He’s been pretty easy going and easy in the barn. I’d say he’s just a nice classy horse.”
Our Dragon King was eligible for the Breeders Crown this year, but due to two poor performances in Lexington his handlers decided to skip the event and it appears to have been a good move.
“We thought it was time to bring him home and let him get well,” Simpson said. “It looks like it might be a smart decision, although it wasn’t something we really had to decide on. He just was kind of telling us that he needed some time to get himself back together. That’s what Ron (Desyllas) and Carol and Bill decided to do. It might pay off for us pretty well.”
Looking toward the future, Our Dragon King has been staked to numerous events next year. Simpson isn’t making any predictions of grandeur, but insists that the horse has potential to be a good Grand Circuit type.
“If he’s capable, he’ll make a name for himself, for sure,” the trainer said. “I don’t know (if he is) for sure. I would probably say yes because he went some big miles out there at The Meadows and different tracks. He’s raced all over at different tracks, so he doesn’t have to have one particular track in his pocket to really race well.
“He’s showed quarters where you know he is going to have some extreme speed. Like the other night, the second quarter was :26.3. Of course, we had the wind at our back, but that’s a pretty big quarter for a two-year-old to hang on and win like that. That’s kind of what I look at to figure how they might come back as a three-year-old. You see quarters like that, it’s kind of impressive.”
And if he races on Friday like he did last Saturday, look for another impressive showing.
This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.