With Canadian weather rather spring-ish at the moment, it is hard not to look a little down the road to the 2010 stakes season. Admittedly, it is still early to be jumping on the bandwagon of a very lightly-raced colt
, although, the Noel Daley-trained Ideal Matters has done his best to pique many observers' interests.
After having gone unraced as a two-year-old last season, Ideal Matters took to the Meadowlands Racetrack for his pari-mutuel debut on February 21. With a pair of February qualifiers under his belt, the $60,000 Lexington Selected Yearling Sale purchase started from the eight hole with driver Tim Tetrick and settled into sixth early on. When Tetrick unleashed the son of Western Ideal, the duo fired from third-over and went on to record a one and three-quarter-length victory in 1:53.3.
"We just wanted to get an early start into him this year to see what we had -- you obviously need that in regard to staking, etc.," Daley said while in conversation with Trot Insider.
Ideal Matters' performance in his pari-mutuel debut was capped off by a :25.4 final quarter. The colt's line was impressive. His display turned some heads, but Daley conveyed to Trot Insider that enthusiasm for the performance should be leveled by some rationality -- even though the mile was encouraging.
"There is a big difference between a mile like that on a Sunday afternoon in a 'non-winners of two' compared to some of the bigger races later in the year. But still, anyone that saw that race the other day saw that he was airborne in that final eighth."
Daley's operation sent out a solid group of stars during the 2009 season. Seeing as though Ideal Matters didn't even put in a charted line last year, one can't even say that the bay flew under the radar.
"He just wasn't ready, but he showed us from Day 1 that he could go," Daley explained. "We had three or four nice ones last year and he was right there with them when we were getting them ready last year.
"He had a little paddock injury to a stifle last year one time, which really didn't amount to much. We just knew that he wasn't going to be ready, so we shut him down."
Now that the Daley Camp has a feel for what Ideal Matters may be able to do when the chips are down, it is now in the process of mapping out a schedule for the colt.
"He'll stay at the Meadowlands," Daley said. "We're not going to shut him down because I've gone that route before and sometimes it can be hard to start horses back up again. We're going to space his races out. He won't be going into the Berry's Creek, but he will be in a series after that. From there, we will be looking to put him into the Jersey Classic and hopefully up to Canada for the North America Cup. He's eligible to everything."
Daley told Trot Insider that he is planning on entering the colt to race this coming Sunday at the Meadowlands.