It was a job well done for the team behind a pacer named Well Said.
This year the New Jersey Sports Writers Association is acknowledging Well Said’s trainer, Steve Elliott, as New Jersey Standardbred Man of the Year and the colt’s breeders, Mark and Ed Mullen of Fair Winds Farm and Steve Jones of Cameo Hill Farm, as the New Jersey Standardbred Breeders of the Year.
The team behind Well Said, along with honourees throughout the world of sports, will be saluted on Sunday, January 31, 2010 at the 74th New Jersey Sports Writers Banquet at 11:30 a.m. at the Pines Manor, Route 27 in Edison, New Jersey.
The common thread among this year’s standardbred racing honourees is a horse named Well Said, who dominated the three-year-old pacing ranks in 2009. His stakes victories included the $1 million Meadowlands Pace, the $1.5 million North America Cup and the historic Little Brown Jug. At two, he also won the Breeders Crown.
Well Said completed his three-year-old season with victories in 10 of 14 starts for earnings of $2,089,693 toward a two-year career total of 14 wins in 26 starts and earnings of $2,690,820 for the ownership of Jeffrey Snyder of New York City and Susan Granger’s Lothlorien of Cheltenham, Ontario.
Although the results will not be announced for two weeks, Well Said will likely be the Three-Year-Old Pacer of the Year. He is also a strong contender for Pacer of the Year and Horse of the Year.
Well Said was born on March 25, 2006 in Cream Ridge, New Jersey at Fair Winds Farm, which is owned by Mark Mullen and his father, Ed Mullen. His mother is a broodmare the Mullens own with Steve Jones of Montgomery, New York, named Must See.
As a yearling, he sold at the Standardbred Horse Sale in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on November 5, 2007 for a princely sum -- $240,000 -- which turned out to be a good investment.
Ed Mullen, a cardboard manufacturer from Westfield, New Jersey, purchased a 150-acre former dairy and soybean farm in 1965, but it was the second youngest of his five children, Mark, who has made breeding and raising horses his career and worked to transform the acreage in the Upper Freehold community of Cream Ridge into a premier breeding farm.
Mark Mullen, 53 and a resident of Cranbury, New Jersey, graduated Upper Freehold High School and then headed to the University of New Hampshire where he earned his BS in the pre-veterinary program. He trained horses from 1991 until 1999 before he returned to the farm to oversee its operations as president.
Fair Winds Farm, honoured as the Standardbred Breeders & Owners Association of New Jersey’s Breeder of the Year in 2008, is now 650 acres of prime farmland and, during the foaling season, home to more than 100 broodmares and their babies.
The co-breeder of Well Said is Steve Jones, 49, of Cameo Hills Farm in Montgomery, New York, who followed his father, Hal, into the breeding end of the standardbred racing industry.
Steve Jones earned his degree in animal husbandry from Delaware Valley College in Pennsylvania in 1982. Until Well Said’s success, Jones was best known as the breeder of Deweycheatumnhowe, the 2008 Hambletonian winner and Horse of the Year.
Driven by Ron Pierce, Well Said was trained throughout his career by Steve Elliott, who was voted the Glen Garnsey Trainer of the Year Award and the William R. Haughton Good Guy Award from the United States Harness Writers Association, both in 2007, when he trained Hambletonian winner and Horse of the Year Donato Hanover and Three-Year-Old Pacing Filly of the Year Southwind Tempo.
Elliott, 56, is Michigan-born but has been a leading trainer of stakes horses in New Jersey at the Meadowlands for the last decade. He is about to complete his fourth straight year when his trainees exceeded $2.5 million in earnings and had an amazing 2007 when he topped $5 million.
For tickets to the banquet -- $55 each -- or advertising in the souvenir program, visit njsportswriters.org, call 877-257-0798 or email [email protected]. Reservations may be made by sending a cheque payable to the New Jersey Sports Writers Association, PO Box 2877, Hamilton Square, NJ 08690.
(SBOANJ)