Autumn is a time of renewal in the racing game, as trainers and owners look to take advantage of more opportunities for their inexperienced two-year-olds, while simultaneously keeping an eye on next season by thumbing the catalogue pages of upcoming yearling sales.<\/p>\n
This weekend at Hastings sees two important races for juveniles. The $75,000 Sadie Diamond Futurity for fillies and the $75,000 Jack Diamond Futurity for colts and geldings may be restricted to youngsters bred here in B.C., but both will go a long way to sorting out the pecking order for the two-year-old division. The Jack Diamond, named for the man who was the driving force behind racing and breeding in B.C. throughout much of the second half of the 20th century, has attracted five youngsters, with the Dino Condilenios-trained Debrusk the likely favourite.<\/p>\n
Condilenios, who also runs Karensnotimpressed in the Sadie Diamond, has a good grasp of the juvenile division this season. Debrusk finished second to his barn-mate Twickenham in the B.C. Cup Nursery Stakes on his career debut, before comfortably accounting for his rivals in the CTHS Sales Stakes. And with Twickenham temporarily on the bench, he should be a popular choice to land Saturday\u2019s six-and-a-half-furlong contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been quite high on Debrusk, and it was hard to separate him and Twickenham early on,\u201d Condilenios admitted earlier this week. \u201cKarensnotimpressed has also really developed well. I think every time she\u2019s worked or run, she seems like she\u2019s gotten better. And right now, she\u2019s really blooming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like most trainers, Condilenios knows that things change quickly with young horses and he won\u2019t be underestimating his opponents, even though Debrusk beat several of them when he won last time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think the horses that ran behind Debrusk last time, ran that bad,\u201d Condilenios said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to respect your opposition, especially ones that haven\u2019t started. Even the ones that have started, sometimes they get a lot better in their second start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief among Debrusk\u2019s unraced rivals is the Mark Cloutier-trained Ole\u2019s Surprise, so named as his mum wasn\u2019t initially thought to be carrying a foal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mare wasn\u2019t supposed to be pregnant and was hard to get into foal,\u201d Cloutier revealed. \u201cBut when we got her home, she slowly started getting fatter, so it was a wonderful surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever Ole\u2019s Surprise does as a two-year-old, Cloutier believes it is next season where he should be seen to better effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a great big May foal and I\u2019m not sure if he\u2019s going to be a fantastic sprinter, but we\u2019re hoping to be lucky and get a piece of Saturday\u2019s prize. His mother broke her maiden in a Stakes race, so we\u2019re hoping that history repeats. But a hundred things can go wrong in a two-year-old race.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trainer Keith Pedersen might consider Cloutier\u2019s \u201c100 things\u201d estimate a little on the conservative side. He takes on Karensnotimpressed, as well as the likely favourite Sunny Wishes, with What A Force, who was fancied to make a winning debut herself last month, but missed the break and trailed home last of four fillies.<\/p>\n
Pedersen, who along with Condilenios will be in Red Deer this week, looking to buy B.C.-bred yearlings to bring back to Hastings, said: \u201cWe were kind of shocked with the way she left the gate. She\u2019d never done that in the mornings. She\u2019d worked well out of the gate beforehand and we worked her last week out of the gate and she worked great again. There have been no hiccups, so we\u2019re just hoping that was a one-off.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, while 100-plus things can go wrong, for the young horses setting out on their racing careers, the Jack and Sadie Diamond Futurities are less about autumnal endings and more about beginnings.<\/p>\n
Hastings Selections<\/p>\n
Saturday, Sept. 20. First post 2:30 p.m. RACE 1: Sunny Wishes made an impressive winning start to her career and should takes some stopping in the $75,000 Sadie Diamond Stakes.<\/p>\n
RACE 5: A favourite of his trainer, Debrusk stepped up on his promising debut to win in Stakes company next time and can move to the head of the division by landing the $75,000 JackDiamond Stakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Autumn is a time of renewal in the racing game, as trainers and owners look to take advantage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[67256,67251,67254,67258,3004,67253,67257,67252,101,67255,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-145947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-debrusk","tag-jack-diamond","tag-michael-bye","tag-nursery-stakes","tag-racing","tag-sadie-diamond","tag-sadie-diamond-futurities","tag-sadie-diamond-futurity","tag-sports","tag-twickenham","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}