This Month's News From Willey Farm & Racing Stable
Wednesday, January 4th 2012
Racing Stable
Racing at Cal Expo is back for the new year. K D Amazin Spirit and K D Nicol are both racing and are at Cal Expo. K D Rowdy One and K D Shenanigans are still on the farm getting ready. Rowdy will be entered next week and Shenanigans will be in a qualifier. Mentioned in the last update was that K D Nicol had a breathing problerm. He had a 2nd throat surgery in November is now fully recovered and racing again. It appears that the surgery corrected the problem as he raced well last week.
The real good news is that K D Amazin Spirit
had a great win a few weeks ago. As usual, he was a long shot, but he has been
coming into form the last few races and really has been coming home
well in the final quarter. If you would like to see his race
replay,
click here. The problem is that with that win, he had to
move up in class and was in a very tough group last week.
(some of the best on the grounds) Despite this, he did well
and came in a nice 4th. K D Rowdy One still hasn't been able
to find the winners circle recently, but we are determined to find
the key. Since he is still a stallion, we placed him in the
stallion register for 2012. Perhaps this will be his calling.
I think we will leave the video of Spirit's great win last fall on this page for a while more. (it was such a thrill, it's hard to let this one go) He beat the odds and came from last, about 16 lengths, and won going away at the finish. This all happened on a sloppy track. If you would like to view the video, just click on the arrow. To view it full screen, double click on the picture.
Farm News
As mentioned before, we bred K D Charm to one of the best trotters in the State this year - Claudius Augustus. She is looking good and enjoying life in the big pasture on the farm. Our friend Tom Parris who keeps his mare Dixie Ridge on our farm, wanted to breed her and we felt it would be nice to have a couple of foals so they could grow up and learn to be race horses together. Currently, she is also in foal.
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We
have one real change on our retired horses - K D Justice. He is
pretty well over his
health issues. His sinus infection is now under control, in
fact he is about the best looking horse out there. His
recovery is really a miricle. He gets antibiotics
every third day which keeps the infection under control. As we
understand it, the infection will never really go away. At
times he acts like a young colt again. The photo on the left
was taken in October 2011.
For more scenes around the farm, take a look at our Photo Galleries Page which has photos from 2002 to the present.
Other News
Janet Parris made some very nice photos of the Qualifiers at Cal
Expo on September 19th, last year -
click here to take a look. To see slide shows of
some of our recent Stake races also photographed by Janet Parris
check out these links -
Sires, April
11th, 2009 or
Sires, May 9th 2009
or Sires, October 31st 2009.
Check out K D Amazin
Spirits' page for a slide show of photos on his first race day
in the fall of 2008.
What is Harness Racing?
Harness racing is a worldwide sport where a special breed of
horses, called Standardbreds, race around a track while pulling a
driver in a two-wheeled cart, called a sulky. It is seen in more
than 30 countries by millions of fans who wager more than $3 billion
annually.
To learn more about harness racing visit the USTA site for their
online guide,
Harness the Excitement!
