“Sometimes things come together. You never know how they’re going to work. Harness racing is one of those things that you have to do for love before you do it for money. This is one of those times when you get something special, and special doesn’t mean having to be the best, but special in the fact we have this opportunity.”
When owner Michael White first met trainer Dan Daley there was a horse in Daley’s stable named Life Sizzles. White so admired the hard-knocking pacer, who raced through age 11 and amassed nearly $930,000 in purses despite never winning a race worth more than $40,000, he decided to buy one of the stallion’s first-sired sons.
White admits it was a decision fuelled by emotion, but it has resulted in more excitement than he could have ever imagined. And who knows, the best might be yet to come.
On Thursday night, White’s purchase – Sonofa Sizzle – will try to win the $100,000 Delaware Standardbred Breeders Fund championship for three-year-old male pacers at Dover Downs. The colt brings a three-race win streak into the final, a streak that includes his victory in December’s $100,000 DSBF championship for two-year-olds.
For his career, Sonofa Sizzle has won six of 12 races and earned $135,516. All six of his victories have come in his nine most recent starts, with the remaining three races during that span resulting in second-place finishes. In January, he was honoured by the Delaware Standardbred Owners Association as the best two-year-old male pacer of 2014.
“We’ve been absolutely thrilled,” said White, who purchased Sonofa Sizzle privately from breeders Charles and Diane Coursey. “Just to get to the races is an accomplishment. To get to the races and compete at this level, it’s unbelievable. You don’t get this a lot.
“This horse doesn’t have to do anything else to make me very proud and very happy that I made the decision I did. Not that I don’t want him to go on, and he has the ability to do great things. He’ll get a chance to compete and see how far he can go. Every time you ask him to do something, he does it. It’s been a very enjoyable journey.”
It is a journey that began with Life Sizzles and includes the family of 2014 Horse of the Year winner JK Shesalady, although there was no way for White to know how all the pieces would fall into place when he acquired Sonofa Sizzle in February 2013.
“I never owned him, but I really appreciated him,” White said about Life Sizzles, who as a three-year-old prior to joining Daley’s stable beat Real Desire in an elimination of the 2001 North America Cup and bested Peruvian Hanover in a Progress Pace elimination.
“He was a classy veteran who would try every week. He never wanted to go on vacation. If you turned him out, he would just roll around for five minutes and want to come back in to work. The horse lived to race. I just thought he was so special I wanted to give him a shot (as a sire).”
It’s proved to be a shot well worth taking. Sonofa Sizzle is out of the mare JK Lady Like and his second dam is Presidential Lady, the mother of JK Shesalady as well as now four-year-old stakes star JK Endofanera.
Daley broke Sonofa Sizzle and trained him through the early part of his two-year-old campaign before the horse was shipped from New York to Delaware for the DSBF series. He finished second in the $100,000 final at Harrington in October and won the championship at Dover in December.
The Dover victory is White’s favourite race so far. Sonofa Sizzle was seventh, trailing the leader by eight lengths, after three-quarters of a mile. David Miller moved the colt on the final turn and Sonofa Sizzle responded with a :27.2 final quarter to win by three-quarters of a length in 1:52.1.
“When I’m tired or feeling down or depressed I’ll pull that race up,” White said. “I still don’t know how he wins from where he was in that final turn. David Miller told me he thought he waited too long and was too far away. To me, that last three-eighths of a mile, I’m amazed at how much ground he covered.
“I never thought he was going to get there. To have seen that was phenomenal.”
The race was special for another reason as White’s older brother, Jerry, who introduced him to harness racing in his youth while living on Long Island, was in attendance.
“There was no happier moment in horse racing than to have my horse win the final and have my brother in the picture with me,” White said. “It kind of was a full circle. He got me started and I got to pay him back by getting him a winner’s circle photo of the Delaware final. It’s pretty cool. It was a very happy picture to send him.”
Sonofa Sizzle, racing in the stable of trainer Josh Green this year, is two-for-two in 2015 with both wins coming in preliminary rounds of the DSBF series. His most recent triumph came in a career-best 1:51.2.
Following the DSBF at Dover, the colt is staked to a number of top races including the Art Rooney Pace in late May, Messenger Stakes in early September and Little Brown Jug in mid-September. He also has the Progress Pace on his schedule in November.
“We have to be careful with not overdoing it,” White said. “He’s going to be on a ‘show us’ schedule, if you know what I’m talking about. He’s going to finish and stay in Delaware for a few weeks and train back calmly. Dan’s moving the barn from Florida to New York at the end of April, beginning of May. We’ll ship him from Delaware to New York and get him prepared for the Rooney.
“If he trains well and looks like he’s ready to go, we’ll enter him in the Rooney. But this horse owes me absolutely nothing. I just look forward to every time he goes out there.”
For now, White is focused on the eight-horse DSBF final, which also includes Smoking Joey (2-1 on the morning line), K J Ben (6-1), Seboomook Katahdin (8-1), and Byby Landon (9-1). Sonofa Sizzle and driver Vic Kirby will start from Post 5.
“The horses this year in this division are phenomenal,” White said. “I think it says a lot for Delaware breeding that so many of them are doing really well. You can’t take anything away from his competition. The Delaware breeders should be very proud of their product. I hope all the sires get more breedings and the breeders do even better.
“You look across those eight horses that are starting and you could be proud of every one of them. And I am. I’m proud of mine, but I’m proud of the competition. It’s a good race and it’s a pleasure to compete with really good horses. That’s good for everybody.”
White, who works as a business coach and trainer, finds harness racing to be a healthy diversion from his job.
“I find it to be very relaxing,” White said. “I do a lot of travelling and I coach a lot of professionals. To be able to go down in the wintertime to the training centre on Saturday and just watch the horses train and clear my head really helps. And in the summertime being able to go to New York and watch the horses. To me, it’s the greatest thing in the world. I’m thankful that I have the ability to do it.”
And he’s thankful for the thrills provided by Sonofa Sizzle.
“This horse has a bit of a personality,” White said. “Everyone says he’s real easy to drive, you just have to let him know what you want. He’s still so young. If he ever figures out the ability he has, who knows what he could be.
“Sometimes things come together. You never know how they’re going to work. Harness racing is one of those things that you have to do for love before you do it for money. This is one of those times when you get something special, and special doesn’t mean having to be the best, but special in the fact we have this opportunity.
“I’m looking forward to seeing where the colt takes us.”
This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.