“It kills me, because I’m thinking that he’s getting unfit. But I’ve watched him and he just blows back up and starts to look strong again."
It might run counter to trainer Ron Burke’s intuition, but less appears to be more with Sweet Lou.
Burke changed Sweet Lou’s between-race routine and the five-year-old male pacer has responded with a four-race win streak heading into Saturday’s (June 28) $500,000 Ben Franklin Pace at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs.
It is Sweet Lou’s longest streak since putting together six consecutive victories bridging his two- and three-year-old seasons. Sweet Lou was the 2011 Dan Patch Award winner as the best two-year-old male pacer in the U.S. and earned more than $1 million at age three, but endured a stretch of just four wins in 31 starts prior to his recent surge.
“We’ve backed off on him and he’s become more like a Thoroughbred,” Burke said. “I can’t ask him to race four weeks in a row; I can’t ask him to train in between when he’s racing. I just give him weeks now where he basically jogs and hangs out in the field.
"Then I’ll give him one hard fast work before he races and he seems to race great.”
Pocono's Sun Stakes Saturday card also includes the $500,000 Max C. Hempt Memorial for three-year-old pacers, the $500,000 Earl Beal Jr. Memorial for three-year-old trotters, the $300,000 James M. Lynch Memorial for three-year-old female pacers, and the $100,000 Sun Invitational for older trotters.
Post time is 6:30 p.m. for the first race. The Sun Invitational is race No. 8 and will be followed by the four stakes.
Sweet Lou, who won his Franklin elimination by four lengths over Bolt The Duer in 1:47.4 last weekend, drew post four in the final.
Three other Burke horses -- Bettors Edge, Allstar Legend, and Foiled Again -- will all start inside of Sweet Lou while Domethatagain, who edged Captaintreacherous by a nose to win the other Franklin elim in 1:48, got post five. Captaintreacherous, the two-time defending Pacer of the Year, leaves from post eight.
“I was very impressed with the way (Sweet Lou) raced the other day,” Burke said. “He’s come back as the horse we always thought he would be.”
Sweet Lou’s win streak also coincides with Ron Pierce becoming his driver.
“Pierce maybe has a different strategy of how to race him and so far it’s been good,” Burke said. “Everything right now is working good, so we’ll just keep doing it the same way until we need to make a change.”
In addition to his quartet in the Franklin, Burke will send At Press Time and All Bets Off into the Hempt, Sayitall BB and Southwind Silence into the Lynch, and Amped Up Hanover into the Beal.
All Bets Off, who won the Art Rooney Pace at Yonkers in May, and At Press Time captured their respective Hempt eliminations. All Bets Off has won five of six starts this year; At Press Time bounced back from a third-place finish in a division of the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes with the addition of Lasix.
“I knew At Press Time would be better,” Burke said. “We did some work on him in between (starts) and got him straighter and he bled very badly. It wasn’t a question of whether we should put him on Lasix, he really needed Lasix. I was happy with his performance.
“(All Bets Off) is a very good horse. He’s top five; he’s as good as any horse out there, I think. He can go either way. He had to be pulled to a stop at the top of the lane (in his elim) and most of my horses if you pulled them to a stop like that they wouldn’t fire again. And he did.”
(with files from HRC)