A trio of $35,975 divisions of the New York Sire Stakes for freshman pacing colts will highlight this Saturday night's card of racing at Vernon Downs.
The headliner throughout the season has been the wickedly-fast Hes Watching. The American Ideal colt is unbeaten thus far in four outings and is the fastest two-year-old ever on a five-eighths-mile track by virtue of his crushing 1:50 NYSS win at Tioga Downs in early August. As fast as track superintendent Tony Rossi has had the Vernon surface this summer, the five-year-old track record of 1:51 (held by Schoolkids) may well be in jeopardy.
Hes Watching will have a new driver, Jeff Gregory, for this one. The colt is trained and owned in part by Dave Menary with partners Brad Gray and Michael Guerriero. He will start from Post 2 in the first division (Race 3).
Menary and Hes Watching were featured in Trot's August article on yearling purchases.
“I could easily have missed him. I wasn’t looking for a cheap American Ideal to be honest,” said Menary. “At the time I didn’t even realize that it was him who was up next. But, when he came into the ring, I thought ‘here’s that small little colt I like from Hunterton’. I put my hand up twice and with no real intention on buying him, I owned him.”
For just $3,000, Menary may have scooped up one of the best horses at the sale.
“He’s lightly staked this year,” said Menary with a shake of the head. “I was making stake payments on a lot of babies this winter and it’s hard to dream on the $3,000 American Ideal.”
Forty Five Red, from the first crop of If I Can Dream, has three wins from six starts, including the Sheppard final and nearly $133,000 earned for the Burke Racing and Our Horse Cents Stables. Vernon's leading driver Rick Plano has the assignment from Post 8.
Design Guru actually went a tick faster than Hes Watching in the Yonkers leg, tacking a :27.3 final quarter onto his 1:54.1 personal record. He has also drawn the outside Post 8 with Jonathan Drury in for the drive. Casie Coleman trains the Artiscape gelding for Jeff Snyder.
Three division of Excelsior stakes for the same group are on the supporting card.
First post at Vernon is 6:45 p.m.
(With files from Vernon Downs)