The training track itself, though, was a mess as a result of the recent snow, followed by heavy rain. In the whole time we were there, we saw only one horse actually breeze on the training track, and that was apparently because the horse -- not one of ours -- had been injured previously, and needed to work with the track vet present to be approved for being entered again. All the rest of the horses that we saw just jogged or had easy gallops, without going all-out.
We were joined at the rail by trainer Bruce Brown, who was supervising gallops for a bunch of his horses. Around 8 o'clock, one of Bruce's exercise riders brought Talking Blues over to the track, just for a once-around jog. Talking Blues is definitely in great shape, and seemed happy to be on the track. It was evident, in fact, that he would have liked to work even harder, as he was still pulling and jumping around as he came off the track.
While we were there, the agent for jockey Rosie Napravnik stopped by, and Bruce got a commitment from her agent to ride Talking Blues in whichever race we end up running in on New Year's Day. Steve and Bruce had talked earlier about possible jockeys, and they'd identified Rosie, David Cohen and Channing Hill as riders that we'd like to have, so getting the commitment from Napravnik was a good sign.
Bruce said he'd give Talking Blues one more breeze, probably on Monday if the track was in good shape, and then, if our horse came back in good shape from the breeze, we'd go ahead and enter on Wednesday for the two-turn maiden claiming races on Friday. There's one that's open-company and another for New York-breds only, but Bruce and Steve think that the racing secretary will probably use only one of them.
Next, it was off to Leah Gyarmati's barn, down at the bottom of the hill near Hempstead Avenue. Strings and Arrows had been scheduled to jog at 8:30, but Leah was running late, so we arrived in plenty of time to watch our horse being saddled and readied for some exercise. Strings and Arrows had breezed five furlongs a couple of days ago, so Leah just took him up to the jogging barn, a 3/8ths mile covered track attached to Allen Jerkens' shedrow, where Strings and Arrows happily cantered around a few laps with Leah aboard.
Back at the own barn, Leah said that Strings and arrows was very close to being ready to race. She and Steve looked at the condition book and tentatively identified a couple of New York-bred maiden special races, on January 16th and 18th, as the most likely targets for our colt's return to the races.
It's getting exciting as racing draws closer!
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