While Canada’s 2010 Horse of the Year Dreamfair Eternal is approaching her return date and her North America Cup eligible brother took to the track in his sophomore qualifying debut early this past week
, owner and breeder John Lamers welcomed the siblings’ baby sister into the world on Wednesday morning.
Canada’s reigning pacing queen, Dreamfair Eternal, will grace fans with her presence on track in the coming weeks, according to her connections.
Following her stellar six-year-old campaign, which included victories in the Artiscape Pace, Masters Series, Milton Stakes, Breeders Crown and Forest City Pace, the $1.7 million career earner returned to trainer Pat Fletcher’s farm for the winter.
“She stayed jogging all winter mostly, a couple times a week. We started getting serious with her two months ago going everyday,” said Fletcher. “She’s just getting over being sick right now -- nothing serious, just a bug. We kind of had to start over a couple of weeks ago so I’m at 2:12 right now and within two weeks I think we can qualify. Nothing is pressing right now for her, she lets us know when she’s tight enough.”
Following a qualifier or two and an overnight assignment, Dreamfair Eternal’s first major task will be to defend her title in the Artiscape Pace at Tioga Downs on June 12. Once she gets going, the seven-year-old daughter of Camluck-J Cs Nathalie will keep busy for the remainder of her season if all goes according to plan. She is staked to all the major aged mare events.
“Getting sick knocked us back a couple of weeks otherwise we probably would have been ready by now. She’s usually ready by now but when she starts racing her schedule goes every week right through to November. It’s crazy, every week it’s non-stop so it’s better to rest her now and get her healthy to tackle the big races when they come.
“If she’s as good as she was last year it will be something else,” added Fletcher.
While Dreamfair Eternal preps for the start of her season, her half-brother, P Forty Seven colt Dreamfair Kovu, took to the track on Monday and romped in his first qualifier of the season in 1:55.1 at Mohawk.
“He’s kind of the hot topic right now in the barn. I’m getting nervous about him, he’s in the North America Cup,” said Fletcher of the chestnut colt, who is assessed at odds of 70-1 in Trot Magazine’s Pepsi North America Cup Spring Book.
“He didn’t grow much; we thought he would grow more,” laughed Fletcher, “but he’s stronger and he’s a lot sounder horse this year.”
Dreamfair Kovu will make his pari-mutuel debut tomorrow night at Woodbine Racetrack in the ninth race and Fletcher says he will play it by ear leading up to the his first stakes events, the Upper Canada Cup at Georgian Downs (eliminations on May 21), followed by the Somebeachsomewhere at Mohawk (June 4).
“We hope he’s good enough to race with these kinds of horses and at least be able to travel and go dance with the big boys and keep up with Big Jim.”
Meanwhile, proud mom J Cs Nathalie became a new mom to Dreamfair Eternal’s full sister, who was born on Wednesday morning around 2:55 a.m. at Seelster Farms.
“She’s a nice looking filly, she’ll be nice and tall. She looks very bright just like most of J Cs Nathalie’s foals and she stands really pretty,” said Lamers. “She seems to be [healthy]. We’ll do a little blood work on her. We like to do that within the first 24 hours of birth to make sure that all her blood is in order and make sure she got enough nutrients when ‘Nathalie’ was carrying her. She [J Cs Nathalie] is 23 years old so we want to make sure that everything is right. But she’s in pretty good hands here with Dr. Don Pooley. He’s been with me for the last 25 to 28 years and he’s one of the best in the business as far as reproduction goes.”
Lamers said he went to pick up a recipient broodmare for J Cs Nathalie's next foal on Wednesday.
“We’re going do the embryo transfer on her,” explained Lamers. “I won’t let her carry anymore foals herself. She’s done enough work. She’s still in great health but I don’t want to let her carry another foal. By doing the embryo transfer, I think she is going to last a lot longer. We’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope we can have another Dreamfair Eternal or Dreamfair Vogel, who knows.”
At the end of March, the U.S. Harness Racing Hall of Fame announced that J Cs Nathalie will be inducted into the broodmares category on July 3 and Lamers could not be prouder.
“It’s certainly quite an honour to be going into the Hall of Fame, especially when we don’t have very many horses here and to have one that produced like she’s produced in her lifetime is quite an accomplishment.”