Trainer Dr. Ian Moore sends out a colt that is not really Malicious -- he’s just named that way -- in Saturday’s $1 million Metro Pace
for two-year-olds at Mohawk Racetrack. The son of Bettors Delight-Silky, who is 7-for-7, won his elimination race on August 29 and will start from post one with driver Paul MacDonell in the final.
The colt’s precocious path is no surprise to Moore and his partners, hockey Hall of Famer Serge Savard and Ron and Gail McLellan’s RG McGroup. Malicious’ wins include sweeping the Dream Maker Series and a division of the Nassagaweya.
“He’s been coming along the way we hoped he would,” Moore said. “He displayed a lot of good characteristics early in his training; February, March. He’s a real tough individual, strong attitude, strong will.”
When Moore went on an exhaustive search for New York-bred colts last fall, he almost literally stumbled upon Malicious, then named Silkys Best, at the Standardbred Horse Sale in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
“I’d looked at probably 280 yearlings,” Moore said. “We looked at Bettors Delights, but most of the Bettors Delights I’d looked at in the last few years were small and they all went for a good amount of money. The year previous we paid $30,000 for one and $29,000 for one, but prior to that $20,000 was the limit we’d spend.
“I hadn’t looked at a lot of Bettors Delights, but the sale was on and I happened to be walking down the alley where Vieux Carre Farms was; there was no one around, everyone was inside at the sale. The caretaker had this colt standing on the floor, because he was going to sell in about 10 numbers. We hadn’t looked at him, but I kind of walked by and looked backwards at him and stopped and came back and said, ‘Can I look at him?’ I stopped and called my partner Ron McLellan, and told him to come out and look at this one. He said, ‘I’ll be out in half an hour.’ I said, ‘No, that won’t work, he’ll be sold by then.’ So he came right out and looked at him and he loved him. We ended up 10 or 15 minutes later buying him for $45,000.
“Dr. Egloff (the proprietor of Vieux Carre Farm), had raised him for the breeder (Linwood Higgins of Scarborough, Maine) and he said he was a real good colt in the field. The last month or six weeks, he’s really stretched out, he’s grown tall and he’s got a lot of size to him. He’s going to be a really, really nice, well developed three-year-old. Right now, like a lot of two-year-olds, they’re not all right there. You can see they’re going to fit some other areas in here or there and he’s sort of along that line. But when he’s on the track, he looks a lot more impressive than in the barn, at the moment.
“We were sort of pointing him for this race (the Metro), the Governor’s Cup and the Champlain; there are some good stakes coming up here in the next little while.”
Moore is a practicing veterinarian on Prince Edward Island, but maintains a stable of four horses, including 2008 Little Brown Jug winner, Shadow Play, in Ontario with the help of Gerald Kelly.
“Gerald Kelly worked for me for 15 years when I ran Island Equine Clinic at home here,” Moore said. “We had racehorses and he used to look after them. He’s a real good guy and this is actually the first time he said he wanted to travel. He was with us last year and didn’t want to travel with any of them and this year he said he did. That’s his favorite colt -- Malicious. He strapped right on to him.
“He and my wife have a bet going. The one who makes the most money at the end of the year has to buy supper at the fanciest place for the other one. My wife’s winning right now (her favorite is stablemate Wellthereyougo, also a two-year-old pacing colt, who won the Battle of Waterloo and an Ontario Sire Stakes Gold Final), but hopefully that’ll change.”
While Moore was happy with Malicious from the start, he did think a name change was in order.
“His name was Silkys Best, after the mare (Silky, a daughter of Western Hanover) and the other one (Wellthereyougo) was Cheek Strap,” Moore said. “How many good horses do you know named Cheek Strap? Ron McLellan, who’s in RG McGroup, owns a McDonald’s in northern New Brunswick and that (name) came from a McDonald’s commercial a year or two ago. There were a couple guys sitting in a car eating cheeseburgers and they’re asking each other why they bought two cheeseburgers. They go back and forth and ended the conversation with, ‘Well, there you go.’
“After that commercial, I just happened to notice how many times in the run of the day that people say that. It’s amazing how many times people say that, it’s a very commonly used phrase, so I stuck that one on him.
“For Malicious, I like one word names; I named Astronomical (1:50 - $778,183) and Impeccable (1:51.1 - $463,706), those are a couple of good horses we’ve had. Good names are hard to find. I like that name and most people in the barn didn’t like that name, but it’s sort of grown on them now. He’s not a dirty colt, but if you turn your back to him and you’re close, he’ll bite you. He’ll never hurt you intentionally, but he will bite you. I got a few bruises from him this spring. I like the name -- it sounds like a good horse. You’ve got Albatross, Niatross and so on. All the good horses will have good names to go with them.”
Asked to name Malicious’ best quality, Moore uses just one word, “Attitude.”
“It’s just a strong will and desire not to let anyone go by him,” Moore said. “Gait and attitude; he’s got a lovely gait to him. He wears a 61-inch hopple. I started him in a 60-inch hopple and we let it out because he kept growing. He’s jogging free-legged, but I never tried training him free-legged. Malicious and Wellthereyougo are the nicest two colts I ever broke.
“It’s so different today with babies. It used to be rodeo time breaking colts. They’re on Equicizers and handled so much, they’re lovely animals to break. I think we put the hopples on him one day and he tried trotting in them for a couple of days and he burned pretty good so we had to take them off for a while and let him heal up. The next time we put them on, he just took off on the pace and that was it.”
(Harness Racing Communications)