Home >  Sports >  Other Sports

Thursday, August 02, 2001

By Pohla Smith, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Buddy Stillings believes The Meadows already has earned bragging rights for the Hambletonian Saturday at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J.

Infrequently represented in the most prestigious 3-year-old trotting race in the world, The Meadows this year has two hometown boys among the 10 starters.

One is Pegasus Spur, who is trained by Stillings and his brother Dick for Dorothy Hardy of Pittsburgh and Roy Davis, founder and head of Royal Travel. The other is Laredo Kosmos, who is co-owned by driver-trainer Ray Paver Jr. and Keith Ross of Bellefontaine, Ohio.

"We got two. There are five from Sweden, one from Hoosier [Park in Indiana], one from California and one from Canada," Stillings said. "There's no one who's stabled [at the Meadowlands]. All that money those guys spend for horses and they've got nobody in it."

Not that Pegasus Spur was cheap when Dick Stillings picked him out as a yearling for his owners at the 1999 Kentucky Standardbred Sales Co. sale in Lexington, Ky. Pegasus Spur cost $30,000 -- a pretty big price for a Meadows horse but midrange for the typical Hambletonian starter. Still, it was a bargain when you consider he already has earned $486,052 and is the 7-2 second-choice on the morning line.

Laredo Kosmos was a solid bargain when Paver and Ross grabbed him out of the Hanover Shoe Farms yearling sale in Harrisburg for $10,000. He has earned $83,581 so far and, though he's the 30-1 long shot in the Hambletonian, Stillings said he believes Paver's horse has a chance at a paycheck. The first five finishers get checks, but Paver said he already is satisfied by having made the final.

Laredo Kosmos got into the final field the hardest way possible. He was the highest money winner among three fourth-place finishers, and he got that fourth by beating Swedish shipper Scarlet Knight, the 2-1 Hambletonian choice.

Both Meadows horses did their final hard training -- miles in 2 minutes, 15 seconds -- yesterday, and Stillings and Paver, who is participating in his first Hambletonian, were pleased with their work and their conditioning. The two men also were equally confident their horses would give honest accounts of themselves in the $1 million race.

"The one thing I liked about my horse [from the start] is that he never got tired at the end of a mile," Paver said. "He's always trotting at the end, and I know there are going to be some pretty [fast] fractions Saturday."

Fast fractions often cause the early leaders to slow down and open the way for strong finishers such as Laredo Kosmos. The colt's endurance showed in his elimination race against Scarlet Knight last weekend when he came from off the pace to finish fourth.

The Stillings brothers have trained five Hambletonian starters for Davis since 1977, and Buddy Stillings said Pegasus Spur "is the best one of the whole bunch so far." The Spur Stable's previous best finish in a Hambletonian final was with Steeler Spur, who was seventh in 1996.