Muscles Yankee - 3CT
bay colt, 3, Valley Victory -- Maiden Yankee, by Speedy Crown
Owners
Perretti Farms,Liverman & French
There are two kinds of talent that can make the difference between a successful racehorse and one that can make millions on the track and be worth millions when the racing days are done. The first is trotting talent and the second is training talent. The record books are full of promising two-year-olds who do not fulfill that promise at three. The trotter who shows off his early form and improves it as he matures is a rarity indeed.
Chuck Sylvester is the definition of training talent. With horses like Mack Lobell and Pine Chip, Britelite Lobell and Winky’s Goal, and scores of others to his credit, his induction to the Harness Racing Hall of Fame could not have come in a more providential year. Muscles Yankee had been a solid twoyear- old, who won about $160,000 and six races. Yet he faltered at the end of the year, breaking stride in the finals of Breeders Crown and Valley Victory. Sylvester took him home to Florida and started again from the drawing board. When Sylvester shipped north, he didn’t make the trip in one fell swoop, but instead stopped off at Colonial Downs, a track built for trotters, to let his stock ramble over the new surface. Muscles Yankee qualified there in June with Chuck’s son and assistant trainer Troy Sylvester in the bike, his first start of the new year, and he would end his career over the very same surface.
From Virginia it was off to the Meadowlands to prepare for the biggest event of the year, the Hambletonian. After a smart effort in an open event, Muscles Yankee was beaten in late June in the Historic by a nose by Arden Homestead Stable’s Kick Tail, who was coming into his own after a year of setbacks at two.
Muscles Yankee was an easy winner of the Beacon Course in 1:54.3. Most of the challenges Muscles Yankee had to stave off came from his own stablemates, Armbro Rotary, David Raymond and Silver Pine. In an ironic confluence Sylvester already had three valuable trotters in his barn, with Muscles Yankee topping off an embarrassment of riches to make four. After a 1:52.2 Hambletonian win over David Raymond, Muscles Yankee leapfrogged straight to the Yonkers Trot, which he won in 1:57.3.
Trainer | Driver
Chuck Sylvester | John Campbell
Muscles Yankee now had dead aim on the Trotting Triple Crown title, but the toughest and final leg of the trio of prestigious events, the Kentucky Futurity at The Red Mile, was to elude him. Sylvester and Campbell had been in this spot in 1987 with Mack Lobell, and were denied in the final strides by Napoletano. There had been no Triple Crown sweep since Stanley Dancer had won it with Super Bowl 26 years previously.
Muscles Yankees inadvertently choked down in the first heat, and finished out of the money for first and only time all season. He struggled the second heat, but his game heart still managed to push him to a third-place finish behind Conway Hall and Trade Balance. Trade Balanced, a son of Balanced Image of the pacing-bred mare Lexi Tree, was the image of perfection in winning the Kentucky Futurity for his trainer/driver David Wade. Wade, also a trotting specialist operated on a far more modest scale than Sylvester, but has had great success with the square-gaiters. His owners made the decision to supplement to the Crown at $45,000.
"Trade Balance has been climbing the ladder all season long," David Wade said. "We feel like he's finally gotten to the top rungs. In his last eight starts he's just gotten extremely sharp, and the money he's earned has given him the right to get into this race.
Also joining the rush to supplement (the events at Colonial attracted a record six supplemental entries) was defending divisional champion Conway Hall. Much like Red Bow Tie who was paid in for $50,000 while under veterinary observation for colic, Conway Hall’s check was due while he was still in Italy, where he’d been shipped to race in the Orsi Mangelli. Considering his Kentucky Futurity showing -- defeating Muscles Yankee in his heat and a second-place finish to Trade Balance in the final, trainer Bob Stewart and the owners (of which his wife, Lynda, was one) just had to figure out if they could go to the Mangelli and the Crown.
Conway Hall won his elimination handily and faced the local favorite, Italian Derby winner Varenne in the $345,000 Mangelli Final. Conway Hall won the final by a nose, but with the six-hour time difference, Stewart went ahead and committed to the non-refundable supplement without knowing the result of the race. Since his charge had been the model of consistency with $686,384 on his card and from his 15 starts it was a calculated gamble.
With two supplements and nine other entries, eliminations were needed. That meant Conway Hall had to get out of Italy, back through quarantine and to Colonial Downs by Friday, Nov. 6. After flying home and going through mandatory quarantine, Conway Hall arrived at Colonial Downs on Wednesday, in time to race in his Sunday elim and have a few days to acclimate.
In the first elimination Muscles Yankee breezed to a 1:55.4 victory, followed by Kick Tail and Indurain. Conway Hall, showing no ill effects from his Italian sojourn, was a wire-to-wire victor in 1:54.2. Trade Balance was locked in until deep stretch, and beaten just a length by the hard-driving Conway Hall, who won in a wire-to-wire effort in 1:54.2. But Wade wasn’t happy the effort, as the big stallion had carried on his stall all night and also didn’t seem to be grabbing the Colonial Downs surface very well.
The three-year-old colt trot was the final race on the card that night at Colonial. A win for Muscles Yankee meant divisional honors were assured and his chances were increased at giving Moni Maker a run for Horse of the Year honors.
Trade Balance was unsettled almost immediately and went on a gallop, as did Stormont Bronze. Kick Tail trotted to the quarter in :27.1 and Conway Hall was quick to step around him and settle on the rail for position. Muscles Yankee was already powering up on the outside, and cleared his stablemate, Silver Pine who broke stride a few seconds prior. From that point, Muscles Yankee displayed the peak form that Sylvester’s conditioning talent had nurtured in him, winning in 1:53 by a leisurely two lengths. Conway Hall turned in a remarkable effort but was second best to Muscles Yankee on this night.
A model of consistency, the son of Valley Victory was the fifth offspring of the 1988 Breeders Crown freshman champ to in turn take a trophy. His earnings of $1,258,611 were a season’s best for his age group. Happiest in the winner’s circle was Irving Liverman, a horse owner for close to 40 years, acknowledging the best horse he’d ever owned.
Co-owners David French, who also owned 1996 Crown champ Running Sea, and Bill Perretti of Perretti Farms had no more plans for their champion. The three top trotters of 1998, Muscles Yankee , Conway Hall and Trade Balance, went to stud, while Kick Tail returned to racing the following year.
The team of John Campbell and Chuck Sylvester will go down in the record books on some of the greatest classic wins of all time. Sylvester leads all trainers in the series with an even dozen champions, while Campbell book-ended the series, winning the first and last events. His 33 trophies and $11.4 million are more than double the earnings of the next closest driver.
Purse $480,000
Colonial Downs, New Kent, Virginia - November 14, 1998
Extras
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