Staffan Lind is settling into new surroundings, but with familiar hopes.
The 48-year-old trainer moved his 15-horse stable to Showplace Farms in central New Jersey after spending the winter in Florida at owner Karl-Erik Bender’s Palema Training Center. Lind and Co. arrived at their new digs on Sunday after a two-day trip.
Last year, Lind stabled in Canada for the season and previously was based in upstate New York.
“We’re going to try it here and see,” Lind said. “We wanted to be here; it’s a good spot for us with all the tracks. Every training center is different and it takes a little time to adjust. But on this farm I have a strip, I have an oval track, there is a pool; we can do pretty much what we want to.
“When you move you have to make sure the horses recover good. We always lay over with the horses. Other stables drive straight through, but for me it’s been the best way to do it. They all came up good.”
Like all horsemen at this time of year, Lind is looking forward to a good season. He also is realistic.
“You’re always hopeful, but in the end there is only one who is the best,” Lind said. “In a 15-horse stable, to imagine you have the best one is not easy. But I feel I have some two-year-olds that are Grand Circuit [horses]. We have some three-year-olds coming back good. We look pretty good. We’ll see what happens.”
One of the three-year-olds is Fico, a trotter purchased for $155,000 as a yearling at the 2011 Standardbred Horse Sale. Fico made two starts last year, finishing second by a neck in his debut and sixth in his elimination for the Peter Haughton Memorial Stakes. Afterward, he was found to have a minor tendon injury and was shut down.
Fico’s stakes schedule this season includes the Hambletonian, Breeders Crown, Colonial, Earl Beal Jr. Memorial and Oliver Trot. A son of Credit Winner, he is out of the stakes-winning mare Motivational and is a half-brother to Carnegie, a six-time winner on the New York Sire Stakes circuit.
“He’s got a big gait; I think he can be very good this year,” said Lind, who saw Celebrity Secret finish fourth in the 2008 Hambletonian and has trained three Hambletonian Oaks finalists, getting his best finish from Celebrity Sweedie (third) in 2006. “He’s my biggest hope with the three-year-olds. I saw him at the farm before the [yearling] sale and I liked everything about him. I thought he was the one. He’s very good. We’re going to qualify him in a couple weeks and see.”
Among the two-year-olds, Lind likes colt trotters Quikwit (Muscle Hill-Twitty) and Kapow Hanover (Explosive Matter-Kimberidge Hanover) and colt pacer Beat The Drum (Tell All-Pop Diva).
“At this point you try to have enough training in them that you believe they will be able to go the speeds necessary,” Lind said. “You sense the gait and what the horse can do right away. Of course, some of them can’t handle the training, or some of them are immature, and you have to reverse the schedule.
“If they’ve been able to train along and are where they need to be, then they usually make it. Then they have to show you how good they are. How fast they will go, you never know.”
But he hopes.
This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.