Monday’s Open Handicap for pacers at Northfield Park finds Night Pro as the 9-5 morning line favourite, which is no surprise considering the seven-year-old horse has won nine of his past 10 starts. But a year ago at this time, owner/trainer Dale Decker wondered if Night Pro would ever race again, and if so, at what level.
Night Pro was sidelined by a stifle tear that ended his five-year-old campaign in August 2015. Veterinarians at Michigan State gave the horse a 50-50 chance to return to action, but following a 10-month layoff Night Pro was back in business. And business was as good as ever.
Starting his season in June, Night Pro won 11 of 21 races last year and never finished worse than second. He had three victories and nine second-place efforts in his first 12 starts, but then rattled off six consecutive triumphs, including a win in the Indiana Sire Stakes championship for older male pacers where he topped a field that included world champion Always At My Place and multiple stakes-winner Rockin Ron.
Night Pro won twice last year in 1:49.1, just one-fifth of a second slower than his career mark of 1:49 set at age three.
“It was totally unexpected,” Decker said. “It was questionable whether he was even going to make it back to the races. The first few races back he was always finishing second, and I was tickled to death with second places with what he had to come back from. And then he just kept getting a little bit better in each race from there on in.
“It was incredible. They gave him 50-50 on returning, and he wasn’t supposed to come back as good if he did. I think in the end he came back as good, and even maybe a little better. It was very exciting, to say the least.”
Night Pro, a son of Pro Bono Best out of the mare Midnight Jewel, has made a career of exceeding expectations. He was unraced at age two because of surgery to remove a chip from his left-hind ankle and slow to develop at three, which left the horse staked only in Indiana.
But Night Pro has won 42 of 75 career races, finished in the top three a total of 64 times, and earned $693,182 in purses. He is a two-time Indiana Sire Stakes champ and finished second to Clear Vision in the 2014 Battle of Lake Erie.
Decker, a Michigan resident who runs a homebuilding business, bought Night Pro – unexpectedly – as a yearling for $14,000 at the 2011 Hoosier Sale. Decker had raised the horse for breeder Linda Marckel and expected Night Pro to sell for more.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Decker said. “I was in a state of shock. I just started bidding and he fell in my lap.”
Night Pro won his career debut at Northfield Park in 2013 and has a three-race win streak at the Cleveland-area half-mile oval. His most recent triumph there was in his seasonal bow February 27 in the Open Handicap.
If all goes well this year, Night Pro could compete in the Battle of Lake Erie, Dan Patch, Hoosier Pacing Derby, Dayton Pacing Derby, and Jim Ewart Memorial, not to mention the Indiana Sire Stakes.
“Last year I didn’t have him staked to anything because he wasn’t supposed to come back to be anything if he made it back,” Decker said. “The only thing I staked him to was the Indiana Sire Stakes, just for the heck of it. I re-staked him to a few more things this year, so hopefully he can stay competitive.
“Of course, when he was five it was supposed to be his breakout year and that didn’t work out very good, so I don’t plan too far ahead.”
The 55-year-old Decker, who attended an early edition of the U.S. Trotting Association Driving School in 2000, has won 237 races as a trainer and 209 as a driver. He said he might breed Night Pro following this season.
“He’s meant a lot to me,” Decker said. “He’s a nice horse to be around, too. He really doesn’t do anything wrong. He’s just a class act.”
This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.