Trainer Jack Fisher got a monkey off his back when he won the James Stump Memorial novice timber, a race he’s never won before, with Harold A. Via Jr.’s Mr Bombastic (Tom Foley).
The timber race was one of three wins for Fisher on the day at the Fair Hill Races, Fair Hill, Md., May 28.

The Maryland trainer has frequently won hurdle races at Fair Hill, and his wife and assistant trainer Sheila Fisher won the foxhunters timber race here, but the novice timber win has eluded Fisher, who consistently produces quality timber horses.

Mr Bombastic jumped happily along in the raucous field of 13, narrowly missing the flying wood as several horses demolished fence after fence. Foley kept the 6-year-old, German-bred gelding in striking distance of the leaders.

By the time they met the long stretch run, Mr Bombastic caught his second wind and left Augustin Stables’ Ghost Valley (Jody Petty) and Kinross Farm’s No Fast Moves (Christopher Read) far behind at the wire.

Foley said the sound of fence breaking could be heard everywhere. “I kept hearing a lot of noise behind me, and I said to myself, ‘I have to get away from this,’ ” he said. “He was so clever with his fences. He is quite a nice horse. I may have moved a little early. A gap opened up, and you could have gotten the Titanic through the horses so I said, ‘It’s time to go boy?’ and he just kicked on.”

Spotlight On Footlights

Fisher also won the feature, the $30,000 Valentine Memorial Sport of Queens filly and mare hurdle stakes.

Arcadia Stable’s Footlights (David Bentley) battled heartily to win for the second year in a row and gave Fisher his fourth win in the stakes race in a decade.

Up against a strong but small field of fillies and mares, the 5-year-old granddaughter of Northern Baby also had Mother Nature to contend with. After several sun-filled races, the feature was inundated with a cold, driving rain and severe wind gusts, some topping 40 miles per hour.

The race started slowly with Feeling So Pretty (Michael Traurig) and Guelph (Cyril Murphy) showing the way for most of the race. At the last fence Bentley moved Footlights up with Feeling So Pretty, while Analyze (Zach Miller) joined them. The three fought down the stretch with Footlights ahead by two lengths.

Bentley was thrilled with her performance. “She’s such a pleasure to ride and is so game,” he said. “The further she has to go the better she gets. She is a really nice little mare.”

Fisher gave his jockey no instructions. “I didn’t have to tell him anything because he’s ridden her enough times; he rides her better than I do. Earlier in the race I didn’t think they were going that well, but David was riding wisely by just tracking the others.”

Bentley wasn’t concerned by the weather, just the competition. “We thought Feeling So Pretty was the one to beat,” Bentley said. “If I tracked them I thought I could pounce on the two of them at the end, and I did. After the rain, the ground was kind of nice with a good cut in it. You could make a nice print in it, and the race turned out to be quite genuine.”

The Nose Knows

Fisher’s third win came with Arthur Arundel’s Monte Bianco by a nose over Oobitwa (Xavier Aizpuru).

The 4-year-old Irish-bred won the maiden hurdle at Atlantic City (N.J.) but was disqualified for interference in the stretch and placed second. Fisher thought he was going to be second again at Fair Hill.

“Foley tried to get that horse beat again,” Fisher said jokingly. “Monte Bianco was originally bought in Florida from [flat trainer] Bill Mott, and then he went to trainer Arch Kingsley in South Carolina and learned how to jump. For now [the plan is that] he is heading for summer racing in Saratoga [N.Y.].”

Augustin Stables also picked up more than one win at Fair Hill. In the first race, the training flat, trainer Sanna Hendriks brought out veteran stakes winner Praise The Prince (Clayton Chip-perfield), who won easily over seven furlongs. Then Shredded (Paula Flierman) took another training flat. Hendriks’ next win came when her stepbrother Stewart Strawbridge took the amateur timber with Pleasant Parcel. Straw-ridge’s brother-in-law, Todd McKenna, came in third with Augustin Stables’ 15-year-old Brankman.

Strawbridge’s win was not so easy. The jump crew at Fair Hill decided not to fix the broken timber fences for the last of nine races. They just cleaned up the debris in the jumping lanes, leaving some of the panels with only two rails or fewer. This caused some problems for horses who were used to jumping larger timber.

“He would have been better off if they had decided to have all the fences up. He kind of bunny-hopped the last fence. I was a little worried about it,” Hendriks said. “He’s a nice, honest horse. I was really happy with him.”