ockey Richard Boucher has waited for a win all year, and he finally got one in Pine Mountain, Ga., with Mede Cahaba Stable’s Class Vantage in the feature hurdle race at the Steeplechase at Callaway.

Trained by Richard’s wife Lilith Boucher, Class Vantage was up against a good field in the $100,000 Supreme Hurdle. Among the eight starters were Cortright Wetherill’s Mattsutterrun (Danielle Hodsdon), Randleston Farm’s Top Of The Bill (Robert Walsh), Sheila William’s Rare Bush (Xavier Aizpuru) and EMO Stable’s Orison (Chip Miller).

Richard said he’d given the 4-year-old son of Rock Point too much to do in previous races, and since he was in a field of really good closers he wanted to stay up front.

As expected, Top Of The Bill, Orison and Rare Bush were leading as they came to the last hurdle of the 21/4-mile course. Richard asked a little more of the horse, and he was able to power on past the others to win by 3/4 of a length over Rare Bush. Orison was third.

“He’s pretty amazing to win against these guys,” Richard said. “He has been third a bunch of times and had to overcome some heat exhaustion problems. I was also just too far off the pace in those races.”

Lilith determined that Class Vantage was getting too dehydrated from Lasix and really worked on keeping him hydrated this summer and fall.
But for Richard, it wasn’t just a win with this horse; he wanted at least one on any horse.

“It has been a very strange year,” he said. “I have had a bunch of point-to-point wins but no sanctioned wins all year. This is the first, so I can end the year on a good note.”

Sadly, the race was shadowed by a fatal horse injury. Top Of The Bill pulled up in the stretch, breaking his shoulder after the last fence. The horse was euthanized a short time later.

Trained by Jimmy Day of Virginia, Top Of The Bill has been one of the strongest hurdle competitors this year, running in six races and making $136,674 for Randleston Farm.


Ladies Rock
Orchid Princess is up on all the others in the filly and mare series with $59,600, thanks to her win at Callaway in the $50,000 Crown Royal Stakes.

Owned and trained by Linda Klein, of Camden, S.C., the 8-year-old mare has been second several times this season. Klein pictured the Callaway race as the yearly goal and has stuck with it ever since, but things have not always gone as planned.

At one meet earlier this year the mare caught wind of another trainer’s stallion and decided she was in season. “I had to hold her for about 51/2 hours while she danced around,” Klein said. “It was not a great day.”

Then when she shipped the horse to Callaway she elected to take a pony to keep the horse company; the pony escaped. “We spent about five hours looking in the woods for that thing, and the mare did not even seem to know it was missing,” Klein said. “I guess something has to go terribly wrong for us to do well.”

But the top filly title is not Orchid Princess’ yet. Her biggest competition comes from Feeling So Pretty. The 12-year-old mare, owned and trained by Lee McKinney, has taken on the big boys this year, running in two $150,000 stakes races and placing second at Iroquois (Tenn.) and third at Keeneland (Ky.).


A Timber First
Another first came for young rider Russell Haynes when he took Vesta Balestiere’s Shady Valley for a gallop around the $20,000 maiden timber course.

Shady Valley has also been a bridesmaid all year, and he found Kingfisher Farm’s Sharp Face (Aizpuru) waiting for him in the stretch. Haynes, a 19-year-old Virginia Tech freshman, sat still on the 7-year-old gray, winning by 1/2 length over Sharp Face.

Trainer and father Bruce Haynes was beside himself. “This was Russell’s first win ever for any race and Shady’s first timber win,” Bruce said. “I think I rode this race harder than he did. He was so quiet in the stretch. He told me, ‘Dad, I had plenty of horse with Shady.’ I don’t know; it was darn close. I was screaming the whole time.”

Danielle Hodsdon is still holding on to her lead as top jockey with another win for owner William Pape on Lead Us Not in the $25,000 Suntrust maiden hurdle by 1/2 length over Victorycelebration (Miller).

The Jonathan Sheppard trainee was still jumping a little green for the last couple of fences. “He had some trouble sticking to the end of his task,” Hodsdon said. “That’s why I think the margin was so close. He had his ears pricked and did not quite get this was not a school. If he had a little more experience we probably would have led by more.”

Kinross Farm’s Chris Read picked up two wins for the day. The first came with their newest claiming acquisition, Capital Peak, in the 31�8-mile, $20,000 amateur hurdle race. The longest hurdle race of the season, this is a good test for horses that are better late in a race or want to make the eventual switch to timber like Capital Peak.

Read went on to win the last race of the day with Haggard in the training flat over Dyn In Texas (Will Haynes).


Sarah L. Greenhalgh