Dresden Raceway wraps up its 2020 season on Monday, Aug. 3 with a trio of $22,000 Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots divisions for the two-year-old trotting colts and a pair of $7,000 Prospect Series divisions for the three-year-old trotting colts.
Local colt Magnitude Ten will make his Prospect Series debut in the first division, starting from the advantageous Post 1. Owner/trainer John Sullivan of Dresden, Ont. will be in the race bike for the Kadabra colt’s stakes debut, looking to add a win to the trotter’s resume of two seconds and one third in three lifetime starts.
“He was so big as a two-year-old that I thought maybe I might hinder him by trying to race him, and I’m pretty patient, so what I did was I trained him down pretty good and then I stopped with him and gave him a rest and let him develop,” said Sullivan, who sent the colt behind the gate for the first time on June 20 at Hiawatha Horse Park. “I am pretty happy with everything he has done. He’s a nice horse.”
Magnitude Ten faces a field of four, including former Grassroots competitor The Reins Of Titan from Post 2 and July 11 Prospect Series winner Los Ballykeelamigo from Post 5. Sullivan hopes the colt can hold his own, but win or lose there will be a bag of carrots waiting for Magnitude Ten in the barn when he comes off the track.
“He just loves his carrots. He costs me a lot by the amount of carrots that he eats. He doesn’t like apples, but he loves carrots,” said Sullivan with a chuckle. “He has to have something in his mouth all the time, whether it’s a sleeve, a hat, part of the bridle or anything. He just has to have something in his mouth. He’s quite a character.”
Magnitude Ten and his peers will kick off the Civic Holiday Monday program at 1 p.m. in the first race, with the second Prospect Series division going postward in Race 5.
The Grassroots colts square off in Races 3, 7 and 8 and two-year-old trotting colt point leader Arch Hall will be looking for a second Grassroots win from Post 5 in the last division. Trainer Blake MacIntosh is expecting another strong performance from the son of Archangel and driver Paul Mackenzie.
“He’s just done everything we’ve asked him to do so far,” said St. George, Ont. resident MacIntosh, who shares ownership of Arch Hall with Hutt Racing Stable of Malvern, Pennsylvania. “He’s a very handy horse. He’s very easy to drive, he doesn’t do nothing wrong, and there’s no real tricks to him. He’s a pretty nice horse, for a two-year-old trotting colt he’s pretty smart.”
Arch Hall will face off against six Grassroots foes in the eighth race, most of them veterans of the first two legs. In the July 11 season opener at Georgian Downs, Arch Hall just got nipped at the wire and had to settle for second, and in the July 25 contest at Hiawatha Horse Park, he was a 1-1/4-length winner on the front end from Post 9, stopping the teletimer at 2:00.4.
With a win and a second under his belt, Arch Hall sits atop the division standings with 75 points, 13 points ahead of Tymal Chrome, who will start from Post 6 in the second Grassroots division.
Fans can download a program and watch the live stream of Monday’s races on the Dresden Raceway website. All the action gets underway at 1 p.m.
To view Monday's harness racing entries, click the following link: Monday Entries - Dresden Raceway.
(OSS)