While Check Me Out is only scheduled for one race on Sunday at The Red Mile, her next event is the two-heat Kentucky Filly Futurity - a race that, according to her co-owner and trainer, she will not win in straight heats.
The reason: Ray Schnittker will not race her or any other horse from his stable two heats in one day.
"I'm not going to race her in the second heat in the Filly Futurity,” Schnittker told harnessracing.com on Thursday as he was about to prep harness racing's top-ranked horse for a training mile. "She's going only one heat. Then we're going to go to the Breeders Crown.”
Four years ago, Schnittker raced trotting sensation Deweycheatumnhowe in the Kentucky Futurity and it took the pair three heats to win.
After that race, Schnittker vowed to never race a horse more than heat per day. He stuck to that with pacer One More Laugh, scratching him from the second heat of the 2010 Little Brown Jug.
In 12 seasonal starts, Check Me Out has won 10 of 12 and banked nearly $850,000. In 28 lifetime starts, she's won 24 and finished second three times. Her only off-the-board finish came as a result of a placing due to interference in the 2012 Hambletonian Oaks. Owned by Schnittker with Charles Ianazzo, the sophomore daughter of Donato Hanover has set world records on both a mile and five-eighths mile track adding to her two-year-old five-eighths mile world record set at Dover Downs.