Three miles over hurdles is a tough distance. McDynamo is a fearsome foe. That Nashville, Tenn., heat and humidity have undone many a hopeful champion. Yet, when Sur La Tete cruised to victory in the $150,000 Iroquois hurdle stakes, defeating McDynamo by 21/2 lengths, he made it look oh so easy.

The effortlessness with which Sur La Tete dispatched McDynamo (Craig Thornton), May 14, legitimized him as a true Grade I open stakes contender. Though to trainer Neil Morris, his rogue ex-flat track horse has always been a serious contender.

“This win makes me feel that he will now get some legitimacy,” he said. “He always seems to come into a big race as the second or third favorite.”

Owned by Kinross Farm, Sur La Tete (Chris Read) dominated the novice ranks last year before taking on the big boys. Since running in open company, he’s consistently knocked heads with McDynamo, Hirapour and Preemptive Strike, the current top horses. This foursome trade off wins and losses as fast as confetti falls on a ticker tape parade, but the Iroquois belonged to Sur La Tete.

One could say that this running of the Iroquois did not boast the most competitive field. Other than McDynamo, the field was a hodge-podge of wannabes and spoilers. Trainer Bruce Miller had Mon Villez (Chip Miller), a third-place finisher in an allowance race earlier this spring and Bow Strada (Matt McCarron), an English import, who prepped for the Iroquois with an allowance win over hurdles at Atlantic City (N.J.).

Tom Kirlin’s latest New Zealand import, Challenge (Xavier Aizpuru) finished third to Bow Strada in that race. Shady Valley (Robert Walsh), Seafaring Man (Danielle Hodsdon) and Mr Perkolater (Robert Massey) rounded out the field, and to look at all three’s past performances, they seemed woefully in over their heads.

But there was McDynamo, a horse with two Breeder’s Cup steeplechase wins under his belt. A horse that has been known to decimate a field while under a hand ride. And in the end, it was only McDynamo and Sur La Tete.

Morris said the quality of competition didn’t take anything away from the win. “If we weren’t there, we would have made McDynamo look like a superstar,” he said. “So we came, and we beat McDynamo. It was legitimate.”

Mon Villez did most of early running, and Read kept Sur La Tete handy, lying second and third, running with Seafaring Man and Shady Valley for the first two miles. Thornton had McDynamo tucked in behind, galloping with the rest of the closely bunched field.

Morris’ instructions to Read were simple: “I told him to just wait until you come off the turn before you start to run. Wait, wait, wait.”

With a half mile to go Hodsdon had Seafaring Man in front. Mon Villez was hanging on but clearly tiring, and McDynamo made a monster run though the turn. Read had Sur La Tete just waiting for the word go.

That tractability is one of the horse’s many strong points. “He’s such a rateable horse. Down the backside he was just jumping through horses, and then he got to the front and Chris had to hold on to him. He and McDynamo jumped the last head-to-head, but Sur La Tete just accelerated to the last, jumped it perfectly and landed running. That’s not something we practice at home,” said Morris with a grin. “That’s his own specialty move.”

While McDynamo’s run at the winner was admirable, Sur La Tete just drew away and proved that he’s the real deal.

While Sur La Tete’s race record–nine wins from 20 starts and six of those graded stakes–makes him a horse worth pampering, it took a lot of pampering to get him to Nashville in top form.

The nervous, neurotic type, the bay gelding is an atrocious shipper who gets delivered to his races the week before so he can settle in. He stays at a nearby farm, and on race day, once at the meet, he never sees the inside of a stall.

At Nashville, one of Morris’ assistants, Michael “Skippy” Murphy stood all day with Sur La Tete on the end of a lead shank, letting the gelding stick his head in a misting fan. When they put his rundowns on, they did it in the parking lot. What Sur La Tete needs is what Sur La Tete gets.

Mis-Understood No More

Trainer Richard Valentine thinks he may have given Understood a little too much attention when he first got the horse in his barn. The chestnut gelding absolutely demolished the $50,000 Marcellus Frost grade III hurdle stakes field, but the win was a long and frustrating time in coming.

Valentine has always known what a talented horse he had but had been flummoxed more than once trying to pull that talent in the right direction. The horse would show flashes of brilliance, win a big race and then not show up for the next one.

Bred (and still owned) by George Orhstrom in his home state of Virginia, Understood was sent to France as yearling to grow up and race. He came back to the United States with very good flat form and was stakes placed in America too.

But “he’s a mental horse,” said Valentine, who trains for Orhstrom’s Whitewood Stables. “He got disinterested on the flat and his form tailed off, so I was lucky enough to be given a chance with him.”

With all the accolades and high hopes attached to the gelding, Valentine said he was “a little in awe of him when he came to the barn. Because he was such a good horse I was easy on him.”

A change of tactics and the addition of blinkers seem to have made a new horse of Understood. The horse’s flat trainers had told Valentine that he wouldn’t run between horses, so he had always instructed his jockeys to take the outside track. He added that the chestnut gelding would also get complacent once he hit the front-end and stop trying.

So a little tough love later, Understood ran with blinkers, and McCormack had him tucked down on the inside all the way around the two-mile race. “I was sick of giving up ground,” said Valentine simply. “We had to change something.”

McCormack added his own psychological twist to the Understood equation and let the horse think he was running off with the Irish jockey the whole way.

“He’s a funny horse for sure. He’s got to get out of bed on the right side to want to run well. The more he thinks he’s running off with you, the better he goes. So I just kept changing my hands on him and he thought he was taking me for a ride,” said McCormack.

While Understood’s winning margin was just 11³2 lengths, it was the way he ran that put him heads above the competition.

“I knew we were the winners the third fence from home,” said McCormack. “The way he jumped, the way he just accelerated when he needed to, he was going as well at the third-last as he was at the first fence.”

Morris concurred with McCormack. “I think Richard’s horse looked unbeatable,” he said.

Understood’s win wasn’t the only joyful experience of McCormack’s week. On May 11, his wife Joanne gave birth to Sean Joseph McCormack, the couple’s first child.

“It’s been a bit of hectic week now, having babies and travelling all over the country to race. But I think I’d better have some more babies as they seem to bring me good luck,” McCormack said with a grin. Negotiations with Joanna are under way!

Albert’s Day

Jody Petty didn’t need luck to ride the winner of the $50,000 Mason Houghland Memorial timber stakes. He said, “It was just Albert’s Crossing’s day.”

Owned by Irv Naylor and trained by Sanna Hendriks, Albert’s Crossing has done nothing wrong since he started running over timber. In six starts he’s collected three wins, and at the tender age of 5, very young for a timber horse, his future looks extremely promising.

The timber race was run under a torrential downpour, and slippery turf added an extra element of danger to the three-mile race. Petty, who’s ridden “Albert” in all of his timber starts, kept the leggy, dark-bay gelding tucked in behind Tom Foley’s early lead on Mr. Bombastic.

“Albert likes to lay close and see his fence and go forward to his fences. He’s always forward, but he seemed particularly forward at Nashville. Of course my reins were slippery too, so maybe that was it,” said Petty with a grin.

Albert didn’t touch a fence and just sailed around the track full of run. With two fences to go, they jumped past Foley, and Petty could see Cyril Murphy on Equistar “looming to my left.”

As they rounded the turn for home, Petty took a hold of his horse’s head because he had noticed the first time around Albert had slipped on the slick turf. Murphy didn’t fare so well, and his horse slipped badly enough to hit Petty with his head. And that was all Albert needed.

“I just dropped my hands and let my horse do his thing, and when I looked around no one was around,” said Petty. “I love winning for Irv Naylor. His horses are on fire right now, and I was glad to jump on that bandwagon.”