For Steve and Cindy Stewart’s Hunterton Sales Agency, last year was a very good year
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The company's 2008 Harrisburg sale graduate, Sportswriter, gave Hunterton grads back-to-back wins in the $1 million Metro Pace for two year olds after Major In Art won it the previous year. Highscore Kemp, a $300,000 Hunterton-bred and sold yearling, set a 1:51.4 World Record for sophomore fillies in the distaff division of the 2009 World Trotting Derby.
And in the shadows lurked another freshman pacing colt, Rock N Roll Heaven, a Lexington Selected Hunterton grad which earned $614,186 in 2009 by winning the $200,000 New Jersey Sire Stakes Championship and Bluegrass, while finishing second in the Metro and Governor’s Cup. It was certainly enough to stamp him as a legitimate contender for the 2010 glamour division.
But Sportswriter, bred by Jim Avritt, would be 2009’s superstar. After all, he was a World Champion two-year-old that gathered enough stakes wins, headlines and votes to be overwhelmingly selected Two-Year-Old Pacing Colt of the Year in the United States.
Could 2010 get any better?
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Steve Stewart, half of the husband and wife team which owns and operates Hunterton. “I thought last year was the ultimate for horses we bred with partners and sold, but when I look at this year -- with Sportswriter winning the North America Cup and now with Rock N Roll Heaven’s Jug -- it’s absolutely over the top.”
Rock N Roll Heaven’s win in last week’s $604,100 Little Brown Jug -- with both single-dash (1:49.2) and two-heat (3:38.4) World Records, to boot -- was really the icing on the cake. “It’s extra sweet because Rock N Roll Heaven was bred by Cindy and I and our longtime clients Cotton and Julie Nash, and he was foaled right here at the farm and raised here as well,” Stewart said.
“He was an extremely athletic colt as a yearling, a really, really nice individual, but he wasn’t a very big horse, and still isn’t,” he added. “He was part of 'Rocknroll’s first crop and everyone seemed to want a big Rocknroll. He sold for $57,000, a good price, but I think he got discounted a little. His brother (Clear Vision, by Western Hanover) sold for $180,000 the year before, and he was a two-year-old stakes winner, but those stakes wins came late in the season, and if you look at Rock N Roll Heaven’s catalogue page, under Clear Vision it only says ‘now racing.’ Now buyers know the good Rocknrolls come in all sizes,” he quipped.
There was even more glory for the Stewarts on the Jug Day undercard, as a yearling they sold last fall for prominent breeders Marvin Katz and Al Libfeld, Live Jazz, set a half-mile track World Record of 1:56.4 for two-year-old trotting colts when he won his division of the Standardbred Stakes. Also, Razzle Dazzle, foaled and raised by Hunterton and sold under its banner at Lexington, finished second in his Little Brown Jug elim to Rock N Roll Heaven and wound up third in the final.
Little Brown Jug Champion Rock N Roll Heaven is owned by Frank Bellino, who, by the way, owns another top colt bred and sold by Hunterton and partners in Lookinforadventure, this year’s two-year-old NJSS Champion with an extremely bright future. And doesn’t that sound familiar? That colt just zipped a qualifier last week in 1:52.3 at Pocono as he tuned up for the Breeders Crown.
He’ll join more Hunterton-bred and sold grads at the Breeders Crown in Wilkes-Barre in the undefeated Idyllic, the year’s richest freshman pacing filly and winner of the $688,000 Shes A Great Lady, and Johnny B Kemp, who set a 1:55.4 track record for two-year-old trotting colts last Friday at Pocono in a Crown prep.
“Our advertising motto has always been ‘the beat goes on,’ and maybe that’s become self-fulfilling,” Stewart joked. “One thing I’m sure of is that we’ve been very fortunate to partner with the people we do, and represent the best in the business, and that’s played the biggest role in our success.”
(Hunterton Sales Agency)