Confederate extended his victory streak to 10 races in a row, winning the $600,000 Breeders Crown final for sophomore colt and gelding pacers at Harrah’s Hoosier Park on Saturday in 1:48.1 with Tim Tetrick aboard.
The track was listed as “sloppy” because of rain late in the program, but “the fastest horse I’ve ever been around,” as trainer Brett Pelling called Confederate after the race, made the conditions moot by putting four lengths between crossing the wire and his next rival, Stockade Seelster. Cannibal (Yannick Gingras) finished third.
Tetrick settled Confederate in fifth by the :25.3 first quarter before Stockade Seelster (David Miller) rushed to the top over Its My Show (Scott Zeron) in a :53.4 half. Confederate came with a first-over move toward a 1:22.1 three-quarters and gobbled up the wet surface from there.
The Sweet Lou-Geothermal colt won his 12th of 13 starts this season and pumped up his lifetime earnings to $2.1 million. He has hit the board in all 20 of his lifetime races, winning 17.
“He does it all on his own,” said Pelling, who picked up his 13th Breeders Crown trophy to move into a tie with Chuck Sylvester for fourth most in history. It was Tetrick’s 23rd Crown.
The trainer said he had “a couple blemishes with (Confederate) but he's just unbelievable. He's so fast. He's so willing.”
And the sloppy track? Pelling said, “I didn't really think about it. There are so many other things going on and (the other pacers) are all in the same boat together. He has been on an off track in the morning, so it’s not really a big deal. He's faster than any other horse I've ever been around.”
Diamond Creek Racing owns the homebred Confederate.
“It's wonderful,” Diamond Creek’s Adam Bowden said. “He's a homebred and it's a family we started way back when I first started. The culmination of this ... he's the best horse we've ever had. I would put him up against any 3-year-old ever. We kind of hoped he was this kind of horse all along.”
Confederate paid $2.60 to win as the 1-5 favourite.
A replay of this race can be viewed as part of the archived Saturday card live stream, available here.
(Breeders Crown)
Let's see Confederate vs. Bulldog in 2024
After his win last night, I can't see why anyone would NOT vote for Confederate for 2023 HOTY. Before this weekend, the only other horse that I thought should receive consideration for the award was Geocentric, since she was unbeaten, but she finished seventh in her Breeders Crown race on Friday night.
Harness racing should do everything possible to create a race next year after the breeding season is over in which Confederate and Bulldog would participate - it would be the marketing opportunity of a lifetime. Make it a buy-in race, and make the purse $2.5 million, which would make it the largest purse of any harness race in history.