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Trainer Kent Sweezey Building Momentum Toward Best Overall Year

As he continues to balance divisions at Monmouth Park and Gulfstream, doing so well enough to be in the top 10 of the trainer standings at both tracks, J. Kent Sweezey is quick to point out that it's more than just a one-man operation.

So his success, he insists, is really team success, with the latest being yet another milestone in a season that is well on its way to being the best year of his five-year training career: Epic Bromance's third-place finish (at odds of 61-1) in last Sunday's $500,000 United Nations at Monmouth Park.

It marked the first time the 35-year-old Lexington, Ky. native had hit the board in a Grade 1 race since he went out on his own in 2017. Epic Bromance was beaten just three lengths by race winner Tribhuvan.

“It's great, of course, but when you have a split string like I do and you have success or win races – and if we win at Monmouth and I'm at Gulfstream, or vice-versa – owners in both places understand it's the team,” said Sweezey. “It's not just me out there doing all of the work. It's the rest of the guys doing their jobs so I can manage everything.

“Until you show up and have the results we're having I think there are a lot of questions. I think this year has answered some of those questions. We have a really good team in both places.”

A year after winning just seven times from 59 starters at Monmouth Park, Sweezey is already 7-for-24 at the current meet, including a victory in the Boiling Springs Stakes with Por Que Non.

Those numbers are good enough for 10th in the Monmouth trainer standings (he is ninth in the Gulfstream standings). It's a long way from when he first arrived at Monmouth Park in 2018 with a small string of horses. He now has 70 overall.

“I think it's the best progression I could have hoped for,” Sweezey said. “We started out with only a few horses the first year we were at Monmouth, then came back with a lot more and the year after that is when we filled the barn that we're in right now.

“I think things are going as well as I could have hoped for. I've got some graded stakes horses in the barn, I have horses for new people I have not had before. Our stock has risen because we have better horses but we still have bread-and-butter horses that are winning races for us and keeping this thing going.”

Sweezey, who has 39 winners from 232 starters with earnings in excess of $1.2 million overall this year – he won 59 races worth more than $1.4 million a year ago – is looking to add to his success at Monmouth in the coming weeks.

He will send Grade 3 winner Phat Man into the Grade 3 Iselin Stakes on Aug. 21 and is pointing Epic Dreamer to the Oceanport Stakes on Aug. 8. He may have another starter in the Oceanport as well, having recently purchased millionaire 5-year-old gelding A Thread of Blue at the Fasig-Tipton July Sale for Horses in Training.

A Thread of Blue, a Grade 3 winner, won the Saratoga Derby in 2019.

“He's a new shooter in the barn that we're looking forward to seeing run,” said Sweezey. “I think he has a lot of miles left in him. We might run him in the Oceanport as well.”

Meanwhile, Sweezey will keep juggling his two divisions, hoping the early momentum he has built up continues through the summer. When Monmouth Park resumes racing on Friday he will send out Destinique in the fourth race, a $12,500 claimer.

“You have to keep the ball rolling,” he said.

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Trainer Brittany Russell’s Progression Takes Her To Saratoga

Though only in her fourth full season of training, Brittany Russell appreciates the history behind her. Based year-round in Maryland, she currently ranks sixth in the Preakness Meet standings with 10 wins at Pimlico Race Course, the second-oldest Thoroughbred racetrack in the country.

The oldest, by seven years, is Saratoga, which held its first meet in 1863 and where the 31-year-old Russell – the winningest female trainer in Maryland in 2020 – will have a string for the first time this summer.

It is another step in the rapid upward progression for Russell, who established career highs with 46 wins and more than $1.6 million in purse earnings last year. Already in 2021 she has 30 wins and a bankroll of nearly $1.3 million, with 5 ½ months of racing left.

Her success led Russell, married to champion Maryland jockey Sheldon Russell, to establish strings during Gulfstream Park's prestigious winter Championship Meet in 2020-2021 as well as Belmont Park this spring. Both were overseen by assistant Amanda Olds, who will also handle day-to-day duties at Saratoga.

“It's really exciting. I hope I can go up and enjoy it for a little bit,” Russell, who is expecting the couple's second child in November, said. “You just hope that it works out. We were going to run up there anyway so it seemed like the right move to have a small string there. That way, they can ship up and get acquainted with the place.

“It's a little nerve-wracking because you want it to work out,” she added. “You don't want to go somewhere just to be there. You want to go to win races.”

Russell ran six horses last summer at Saratoga with two wins – King's Honor ($23) in an Aug. 6 claimer going one mile on the grass, and So Gracious ($73.50) in a 5 ½-furlong turf allowance Sept. 6. Among her other starters were Wondrwherecraigis, fourth in the Amsterdam (G2), and multiple stakes winner Hello Beautiful, sixth in the Prioress (G2).

King's Honor gave Russell her 100th career victory June 19 at Pimlico.

“King's Honor and So Gracious both won there. It was huge, absolutely huge. Especially because, it's not like they were favorites,” Russell said. “We've won shipping in and hopefully we can win a few stabled there.”

Russell said she plans to keep around 10 horses at Saratoga, which will take up residence under the same barn roof as Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey. Among them is stakes-placed Yodel E. A. Who, fourth in a July 11 optional claiming allowance at Belmont.

“We have a few up there. I sent a couple up to Amanda actually like two days ago. Hopefully we have a couple decent horses to run in the right spots,” Russell said. “I don't think any of the ones that I've sent up have started here yet. I have a couple maidens. Yodel will run back there. We're sort of at a crossroads with a couple of them, trying to decide whether to go up there or run here. A couple of them are undecided and are still here in Maryland.”

On July 3 at Delaware Park, Russell won the Alapocas Run Stakes for six-furlong sprinters with 6-year-old Whereshetoldmetogo and 1 1/16-mile Christiana Stakes on turf with sophomore filly Out of Sorts.

It was the first career stakes win for twice previously placed Out of Sorts and fourth in five starts for Whereshetoldmetogo, the previous three coming in the 2020 Frank Y. Whiteley and Dave's Friend and 2021 Not For Love at Laurel Park.

“That was awesome. We love Whereshetoldmetogo. When he's right, he's awesome. He's so much fun to have in the barn,” Russell said. “But for Out of Sorts to step up and win a stake, that was the cherry on top. The thing with Out of Sorts being a 3-year-old, you kind of want to find out now. Do you give her a bigger test and if she doesn't respond, no problem, you just kind of keep her local? We're still trying to decide.

“She came out of the race really well. Do you take her to Saratoga? We're kind of on the fence but it seems like, why not? They paid $1,000 for her. She's a stakes winner. We might as well find out if we can really have a lot of fun now,” she added. “And you don't know until you try, really. She's answered every test so far. [Once] we put her on the turf, it's like, [she's a] racehorse. And she's done really nothing wrong on the dirt. She's really cool.”

Multiple stakes winner Hello Beautiful, second to undefeated Chub Wagon in the June 13 Shine Again, is being pointed to the $100,000 Alma North for fillies and mares 3 and up sprinting 6 ½ furlongs July 31, also at Pimlico. The Alma North is part of the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred Championship (MATCH) Series.

Hello Beautiful set a spirited pace in the six-furlong Shine Again and dug in when confronted by Chub Wagon in deep stretch, coming up a neck short in her first race in four months. She has been entered twice since – as main track only in Pimlico's July 4 Jameela, which stayed on the grass, and Delaware's July 10 Dashing Beauty, won in a romp by Chub Wagon.

“She's going to run here at the end of the month. That was the ultimate goal all along,” Russell said. “It's not that we're afraid to run against [Chub Wagon] again; we're not trying to duck her. Hello Beautiful ran a big number off the shelf. A big race. So to run her back in four weeks up there … that's a tough track, I've noticed, for speed horses so it was going to make us feel a little bit better just to give her a little more time out of that effort. The Pimlico race? If Chub Wagon comes, great. But I know that we're going to have a good filly on the 31st.”

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New York Commission: ‘Magnitude Of Impropriety’ Stands Against Preliminary Injunction For Rice

The New York State Gaming Commission, represented by the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James, has filed a memorandum of law with the Schenectady County Supreme Court regarding trainer Linda Rice's legal appeal of her three-year suspension.

According to the Thoroughbred Daily News, the July 2 filing argues that “Ms. Rice is not entitled to a preliminary injunction staying enforcement of the commission's determination. Ms. Rice is not likely to succeed on the merits of any of her claims, and the equities weigh in favor of the commission. Accordingly, the motion for a preliminary injunction should be denied.”

Rice had seen her license revoked officially on June 7, two weeks after the NYSGC voted to uphold a hearing officer's recommendation that Rice's license be revoked with the condition she could not reapply for licensure for at least three years. She had also been ordered to pay a fine of $50,000 and was to be denied all access to New York gaming commission-sanctioned properties.

The County of Schenectady Supreme Court granted a temporary restraining order two days after the New York State Gaming Commission issued the order to revoke her training license, allowing Rice to resume training in New York until her legal appeal is played out in the court system.

Rice is accused of receiving information from the racing office about which horses were entered in which races prior to the official close of entries. The alleged information exchange took place over a period of 2011 and 2014, and the commission first brought a complaint against Rice in 2019. A series of hearing dates took place in late 2020, during which the commission and Rice's attorney presented information to a hearing officer along with numerous volumes of data and interview transcripts.

The July 2 filing states:

“Ms. Rice moves for a preliminary injunction staying enforcement of the commission's penalty for her misconduct. The motion for a preliminary injunction must be denied because Ms. Rice has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits or that the equities weigh in favor of preliminary injunctive relief…

“Because Ms. Rice failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits, the Court need not address the remaining elements. Nevertheless, Ms. Rice also failed to demonstrate that the equities weigh in her favor. Rather, the equities weigh against the granting of a preliminary injunction because of the magnitude of impropriety at issue.”

Read more at the Thoroughbred Daily News.

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Eric Eldin, 89, Passes Away

Classic-winning jockey Eric Eldin passed away at 89 on Sunday, Racing Post reported. Apprenticed to Ryan Jarvis, Eldin rode his first winner, Penfair (GB) (Fair Trial {GB}), in 1950, and his greatest win as a reinsman was aboard Front Row (Ire) (Epaulette {GB}), in the Irish 1000 Guineas. The Yorkshireman was also in the saddle for Lucasland (GB) (Lucero {Ire})'s wins in the 1966 July Cup and Diadem S. Abroad, Eldin also rode Derby winners in India and the Netherlands. All told, Eldin celebrated about 1,200 winners before hanging up his boots in 1979 and later becoming a trainer in Newmarket. He trained from 1981-1991, before retiring.

Eldrin had two daughters, Michelle and Lorraine. The latter married jockey Allan Mackay and the couple have two sons who also became jockeys-Jamie and Nicky.

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