Month: June 2023

It seemed like all of harness racing was rooting for the Denver Nuggets to win their first NBA championship on the night of June 12, and the reason is Nikola Jokic.

Jokic, considered by just about everyone who knows basketball to be the best player on Earth, led his Nuggets to a 94-89 victory over the Miami Heat, giving Denver a four-games-to-one win of the best-of-seven NBA Finals.

Maybe Jokic can now dedicate a bit more time to his other passion, harness racing.

“He told me, 'My job is basketball, but my passion is horse racing,'” driver/trainer Tim Tetrick told the New York Daily News' Stefan Bondy. “[Jokic] said, 'I would trade jobs with you in a heartbeat if it paid better.'”

Jokic and Tetrick met several years ago on Facebook.

“Just a down-to-earth kind of dude. Low-key,” said Tetrick. “You wouldn't know he gets paid $40 million a year to play basketball. He shows up with sweats to the barn. Then he's got his training suit and jumps in and he just loves to hang out.”

Jokic visited The Big M in December of 2021 and checked out the action in the back paddock. When he was in town to play the Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks in March of this year, 'The Joker' spent some time at Brett Pelling's barn.

“He stopped in the barn earlier this spring,” said Pelling. “He came at six in the morning. He has good knowledge of the horses. He's very eager to listen, and wants to talk about horses, not basketball. He's really into learning. How do you train? How do you feed? Very good questions. He has a real base understanding. He was definitely absorbing information.”

Jokic, 28, grew up on a farm in Sombor, a city in the northern part of Serbia, where as a teenager he fell in love with horses, specifically trotters, at the track in his hometown and even worked there for six years cleaning stalls. He owns his own farm with a training track and, when HRU did a feature about the triple-double King a year-and-a-half ago, he owned about nine trotters.

Jokic is a two-time NBA MVP, and now, has added NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP to his resume. Maybe he's now setting his sights on a Meadowlands Pace or Hambletonian trophy.

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Bruce Kravets has started 23,375 horses in a training career that began in 1977. He's won 3,756 races but has never won a graded stakes race.

That could change Saturday for the 67-year-old Kravets when he sends out the streaking Nimitz Class, riding a five-race winning streak, in Saturday's Grade 3 Salvator Mile at Monmouth Park – one of four stakes races on Haskell Preview Day at the Oceanport, N.J., track.

The Salvator, the Grade 3 Eatontown Stakes, the Grade 3 Monmouth Stakes and the Pegasus Stakes for 3-year-olds, the local prep for the TVG.com Haskell Stakes on July 22, highlight the 14-race card.

“It would mean the world to me to win this race,” said Kravets. “I've been at Penn National since 1979. I've had a lot of good horses but I've never had a horse like this. It's exciting.

“It was exciting to win four straight stakes races at Laurel. But to win this race would be something special.”

A 4-year-old son of Munnings–Five Diamonds, by Flatter, owned by Tom Coulter, Nimitz Class is 4-for-4 this year and 10-for-16 over a career that has made him Kravets' highest-money winner ever with $464,880 in earnings.

He started his five-race winning streak with a win in the Robert Manfuso Stakes at Laurel on Dec. 22 and then won three straight races at Laurel before winning an allowance race in his last start at Parx on May 22. The distances of those victories have varied from a mile to a mile and 70 yards to a mile and a sixteenth to a mile and an eighth.

The Salvator Mile has attracted a field of 10.

“I think blinkers and a route of ground have been the key for him,” said Kravets. “He's been pretty unstoppable since we stretched him out and put blinkers on him.

“Everything together has led to him being this good now – getting mature, blinkers and definitely running longer. His first couple of starts I sprinted him and he did win going three-quarters of a mile. But that's not him. He's a big horse with a big stride. He just wants to do his own thing.”

The Salvator Mile serves as the local prep for the Grade 3, $400,000 Monmouth Cup on the Haskell Stakes undercard, but Kravets isn't looking that far ahead yet. He has a major goal in front of him Saturday that he is focused on.

“When you're at Penn National you know what to expect with what people send you,” said Kravets. “They're not giving you stakes horses or allowance horses. I'm used to the cheap claimers. So to have a horse like this means a lot to me.”

Jevian Toledo is listed to ride.

The post At Long Last, Kravets Has Big Chance For Graded Stakes Win appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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