You look at Virtual Horizon’s perfect past performances this year and wonder what could possibly be wrong going into Saturday’s Plainsman eliminations for three-year-old Alberta-bred colts and geldings?
Eleven starts; 11 wins. How can there be something amiss?
Virtual Horizon hasn’t lost since Oct. 29, 2022. And that was after a brutal trip. There’s a problem?
And yet when you talk to Virtual Horizon’s trainer/driver, Brandon Campbell, the answer is plenty.
It turns out that Virtual Horizon is a kook, a knucklehead, the wacky one.
It starts with a simple question -- just how good is Virtual Horizon? -- and Campbell starts off with a soliloquy longer than Hamlet.
“I don’t know, to be honest, and that’s the honest truth. He’s a very athletic animal, but he’s no good at paying attention. He’s always gawking at things. I don’t know what to expect. It’s always a surprise. He’s the mystery horse. He gets lost down the lane. He takes the lead and then he starts waiting for another horse to come up beside him. He drives himself.”
And he drives Campbell crazy.
“He pays no attention to me at all. He’s ignorant. He was like that as a two-year-old too,” he said of Virtual Horizon, who was voted Alberta’s champion two-year-old last year when he won the $70,000 Century Casinos Pace and the $75,000 Alberta Sires Stakes Super Final. “He always tried to run away. He kept acting like he had mouth problems. He’d shake his head it the air up and down or side to side. It was like he was saying to me, ‘You’re not going to tell me what to do.’
“When we were training the two-year-olds down to get ready to qualify, he wasn’t at the top of the list,” said Campbell, who was Calgary’s leading trainer and driver in the meet that recently concluded at Century Downs. “But when we put them behind the gate, it was clear that he was the best one we had. Even then, though, he would get lost looking for competition. Even just jogging in the morning. He’ll go by a horse then he’ll slow up and wait. Go by and wait. Go by and wait.
“He hasn’t changed one bit,” said Alberta’s perennial leading driver. “And Saturday’s race will be the first time he’s raced on a mile track. I don’t know how I’m going to keep him motivated and paying attention all the way down that long lane. I don’t know. I just don’t know.
“He’s not flashy by any means," Campbell said of the horse that is owned by his partner, Jodi Loftus, along with George Rogers and Raymond Henry. "He never wins by a million lengths. He doesn’t use himself more than he has to. It’s almost like he has the other horses measured so that he can win by just enough.
"It’s like he’s thinking, ‘Ok, I did my job,’ and he slows himself up. It’s all just a game to him. He just sits and waits. Then I have to get after him again. He does it all the time. There were four or five times that I thought I was beat. Then he takes off again and goes just enough to hold them off.”
It’s maddening, said Campbell, who still isn’t quite sure what he has in his barn.
He’s got a horse that has won the $59,600 Alberta Marksman Stakes, the $90,000 Moore's Mile, the $59,000 Alberta Maverick and the $114,250 Ralph Klein Memorial. That’s for certain. That is history.
But is that it? Is what Virtual Horizon has shown as much as he’s going to show? Or is there more ahead?
Again, Campbell pauses.
“I don’t know. He’s already won $286,000 -- that’s more than any horse I’ve ever had -- and there are still a bunch of stakes like the Western Canada Pacing Derby and the three-year-old Super Finals ahead.
“He keeps giving it to me. But is that all he has or is there more? I don’t know.
“He’s got lungs like you can’t believe. But it’s what’s going on in his head that puzzles me. He’s like a big child. That’s what is frustrating.
“I’d be shocked if that is all there is. There has to be more to him. But I don’t know for sure. I just don’t know.”
Virtual Horizon hasn’t raced since the Aug. 12 final of the Ralph Klein. But it hasn’t been because of any problems.
“My only chance to race him would have been against Shark Week in races for older horses,” he said of Shark Week, who has won nine races in a row and who became the first harness horse in history to pace faster than 1:50 in Western Canada when he stopped the teletimer in a sensational 1:49.2 on June 3 at Calgary’s Century Downs.
“I wouldn’t do that to Virtual Horizon. He’s been far too good to us. Instead I gave him 10 days off after the Ralph Klein. He actually put some weight back on. He’s been jogging and training really well. He’s in good shape. He’s got a lot of miles in him. I’ve trained him in 1:55.”
Virtual Horizon was picked out at the 2021 ASHA Yearling Sale for $21,000 by Campbell, who said he really liked the looks of the colt.
“So did Jodi. She told me she wasn’t leaving the sale without him,” said Campbell.
Virtual Horizon also has the breeding to be special.
His sire is Vertical Horizon, now owned by Christopher Lambie, who was in the top three in 49 of his 105 races and took a mark of 1:49.3 at Harrah's Chester in 2011, and competed in the Little Brown Jug and the Breeders Crown.
But it’s his dam, Saucy B, who is even more intriguing.
Saucy B is also the dam of Stash The Cookies, who is still racing and has won 27 of her 92 starts including three of her last four against Alberta's top distaffers -- the other start a troubled trip.
And, Saucy B, is the dam of Saphire Blue too. Also still competing, Saphire Blue is a multiple Alberta stakes winner who has been in the top three in 27 of her 42 starts.
“Virtual Horizon is not a kid’s pony. He gets hot just going out the door of the barn. He gets quite excited. And he gets hot behind the gate too. He tries to go right through it so I have to pull him off the gate a little bit.
“But once the gate opens, he’s great. He goes from one extreme to another.
“Now it’s just a matter of finding out what happens on Saturday and from there on. Like I said, you just never know.”
To view Saturday's harness racing entries, click the following link: Saturday Entries - Century Mile.
(Curtis Stock/thehorses.com)