Quebec trainer Daniel Martin has not had the year he anticipated from last year’s dominant two-year-old pacer in Quebec, Big Bam Ray.
The Yankee Cam colt will make just his ninth start of 2008, and third at Hippodrome de Montreal, as the standout in a $40,000 Quebec Sires Elite stake on Sunday afternoon.
Lack of live racing in Montreal this summer forced Martin to alter his schedule with Big Bam Ray. The colt raced a few times at the half-mile tracks in Quebec City and Trois-Rivieres, and even won a stake in June at Sulky Quebec, but “he’s not as comfortable on a half-mile track,” Martin said. He also tried the Toronto circuit, but that proved too tough.
After a six-win, $126,000 campaign in 2007, highlighted by a 12-length victory in the $140,000 Coupe des Eleveurs final in Montreal, Big Bam Ray has three wins and about $40,000 made this year.
On Sept. 28, he lowered his mark to 1:52.4 in a $5,000 pace, only his second Montreal appearance of 2008.
“He’s feeling good now,” Martin said. But after Sunday, there’ll be just one stake left for him this season in Montreal, the track he clearly favours.
“The way things turned out in Quebec cost me and the other owners of this horse a lot of money,” said Martin. “I really don’t know where we go from here with him, either. If there’s nothing for older Quebec-breds next year, what do we do? He’s won a lot of money so conditions will be tough. Do you put him in a claimer?”
Martin said the one consolation for this difficult year has been the fact it coincided with one of his weakest groups of Quebec-bred two-year-olds.
“If there was going to be a year with reduced purses, it might as well be this one,” he said. “They weren’t going to win $100,000 in any case.”
To view Sunday’s entries, click here.
(Paul Delean for Trot Insider)