As a number of harness racing's top four-year-olds pepper the Saturday program at Woodbine Mohawk Park for the Graduate Series, one four-year-old that's shown promise of talent will race on the undercard in a conditioned event. And his trainer is more than pleased to be there.
"I'm not going to lie; I wish I was racing in [the Graduate] instead of an overnight but I'll celebrate what we have," said John Pentland, the trainer of Talbot Romeo. In just seven lifetime starts, the four-year-old son of Roll With Joe - Northern Duchess boasts a 5-1-0 summary. Clearly blessed with ability and speed as shown by his 1:50.1 win in his most recent start, Talbot Romeo was hindered by an injury that kept the promising pacer on the sidelines.
"The horse was racing in February of last year with a tendon issue, not a severe tendon issue," Pentland told Trot Insider. "He ended up being a really nice horse...not that we were shocked he was that good of a horse because he showed that as a two-year-old qualifying when he had originally developed the injury."
With three wins in four starts as a three-year-old, including a 1:52.3 mile in February of 2017, Talbot Romeo's breeders and owners Karen and Wayne Carroll thought highly enough of the colt to pay him into the North America Cup up until the April 15 payment. The colt came back to the track on May 12 and qualified again, but then disappeared.
"We backed off with him figuring the best way to handle him was to do a procedure on the leg and re-qualify him prior to the [North America] Cup. And it didn't work. He broke down in that qualifier in May.
"So then we did some extensive work on him at Milton Equine Clinic and spent almost a year bringing him back," noted Pentland. "He never got turned out, the owners were really patient...they gave me as much time as I wanted with him. Everybody's real happy right now, the horse is good right now...it's all great."
After undergoing treatment and stall rest for a couple of weeks, Talbot Romeo was nursed back to form with six weeks on a walker and then "a great deal of jogging," which wasn't easy to plan over a less-than-kind Ontario winter.
"I trained him back over the winter which was tough to pick and choose your spots when you could train him...but we never swam him. We swam him when we quit with him in February and it didn't work for him. So we just kept on with as much leg work as we could get into the horse. The pounding and the leg work, training slow miles.
"When it was time to drop him, I felt like I could have raced him two or three months before I ever raced him...not that he had that many fast miles. I was in 2:30 with him for three or four months. Then when I dropped him, he was easy to drop and stayed sound doing it."
Talbot Romeo returned to the track on April 19 and closed well to finish just behind O'Brien Award finalist The Joy Luck Club in his first qualifying test, pacing his mile in 1:56.2. Eight days later, another qualifier provided a quicker result with a qualifying win in 1:54.4. His first real test came on May 7 in a race at Mohawk. With regular driver Mike Saftic at the controls, Talbot Romeo sprinted away to a four-plus length score in 1:51. He's since raced twice more, and Pentland is pleased with both the on-track performance and the state of his pacer given his previous injury.
"He's coming out of the races really good, there really hasn't been much of a setback for his training. We just look a long time to train him back. "
With what is essentially his fourth start in a four-week run, Pentland plans to give his pupil a rest after Saturday's start at Mohawk regardless of the result.
"This week was iffy that we were going to put him in; I thought the class may not fill next week with all the stakes eliminations," admitted Pentland. "The plan is to race him two or three times a month, no more than that."
After those dashed Grand Circuit-level aspirations from a year ago, the connections were more conservative this year and didn't make Talbot Romeo eligible to any stakes events. Pentland is hopeful that approach will pay off in spades long-term with a healthy, consistent and competitive horse. The Carrolls also have added interest as the owner of Northern Duchess and a Sportswriter yearling sister to Talbot Romeo, appropriately named Talbot Juliet.
"Nobody wanted to put any pressure on the horse, and the [Confederation] Cup would have been pressure. And that's not like them," said Pentland. "I always think that money will come; you might have to earn it a different way, but it will come."