It was a hefty price tag - $350,000, in fact - to take home You Know You Do from last year’s Harrisburg Yearling Sale, but it looks as though it was money well spent.
You Know You Do was a first-over winner for driver Yannick Gingras in the $360,650 Peter Haughton Memorial, with stablemate Samo Different Day completing the Jimmy Takter-trained exactor.
Samo Different Shot to the lead for Takter from Post 1 and together they led the field through fractions of :28, :56.1 and 1:25.3. Gingras got away third with race favourite You Know You Do, and they held their spot until well past the mid-way point. You Know You Do was guided off the rail heading toward the final turn, and he quickly went after stablemate Samo Different Day. Little separated last week’s elimination winners at the three-quarter pole, but You Know You Do edged away in deep stretch and drew clear to win by a comfortable margin over Samo Different Day and Farsetti Hanover in 1:54.2.
“We put together a group and went after him vigorously,” co-owner Marvin Katz said in the winner's circle. “We have 80 to 90 percent fillies, 10 percent colts. (But) he was very, very special. We’ll look for colts here and there that we think could be exceptional. It’s really a policy of pursuing excellence and we thought he could fit that category.”
The two-year-old son of Muscle Hill-You Want Me improved his record to 3-1-0 from four starts for owners Howard Taylor, Order By Stable, Bud Hatfield and the Canadian partnership of Marvin Katz, Al Libfeld and Sam Goldband of Toronto, Ont. The lion’s share of the purse bumped You Know You Do’s earnings to $215,947.
Stay tuned with all the happenings on Hambletonian Day with updates posted in the 2017 Hambletonian Day News Centre.