A new year begins with lots to look forward to!  Our first starter of the year was the filly, Three Arch Bay, at Penn National on January 7^th. While she did not win, she did turn in a greatly improved race, rallying strongly in her first try at a distance to finish a closing 3^rd, beaten just over one length for the win. This was her first on the board finish in four lifetime starts. It was by far her best race, a real step forward. Recall she was totally up the track the first two races, a well beaten 4^th last time, so a close, closing 3^rd is clearly moving in the right direction. Have to be pleased with where we are now with her compared to where we were just a few weeks ago. Good way to start the year.

The following day at Gulfstream Park, Title Fight sat a perfect trip in 3^rd, under leading rider Javier Castellano and simply couldn’t quicken when the real running came, finishing 5^th. Javier made the exact same comment as hall of fame rider Edgar Prado, who rode him previously, “the horse feels good, tries hard, and simply doesn’t have a strong enough finishing kick”. Bottom line, he’s just not as fast as these kind of horses. We’ll look for a softer spot and a longer distance next time at Gulfstream. If that doesn’t do the trick, he’ll ship up to Penn National, where the racing is a lot less competitive (for about the same money). Since he’s sound and honest, he should perform very well there, if we go that route. Recall last year when we sent Selma Gayle up north after running 12^th and 10^th beaten 20+ lengths for us at Gulfstream in the winter, she reeled off three straight easy wins for us at Penn. This is a far better horse than she ever was and has run much better at Gulfstream than she did, so chances are very good he’d look like a different horse, if we ended up going that route.

All our horses are training well, we are looking for races for Big Apple Brit, Three Arch Bay and Titanium Jo for the coming week, while Unspoken Quality is in the 10^th race January 14^th at Gulfstream Park and he looks to have a real good shot in a large field there.

Sonny’s Pharoah is ready to return to training and will ship in from Daydream farm to trainer Mark Salvaggio shortly.

On Saturday January 9^th, a group of Kenwood Co-Owners met at Kenwood president Jack Czajkowski’s home near Monmouth Park, as we introduced our new active racing group, which will include a stable of horses based at Belmont Park for racing in New York, with a top New York trainer. Look for more details soon as Kenwood Racing expands into the New York market!

On Sunday January 10^th, our old friend Sky Ace was beaten 25 lengths at Gulfstream Park (see chart). He’s never come close to hitting the board in his career to date. For that matter, he’s never been in the hunt for any part of any race since being claimed from us at Belmont Park last fall. We really liked the horse when we purchased him at OBS last spring, but when he showed absolutely no ability in his training, we ran him where we thought he belonged in his debut and he was claimed from us for $40,000. If we had kept him, we’d have had $25,000 more in expenses and $40,000 less from the claim, quite a difference. That’s part of the game, and why you don’t want to overpay at sales because no matter how much work you do, some horses just have no ability, get hurt, don’t want to be a racehorse, etc. It’s also why you run them in the right spots, not worrying about the occasional one someone claims from you that turns out to have been a good buy (and with us that happens VERY rarely!). 

Kenwood Racing founder & Co-Managing Partner H. Robb Levinsky will one of the featured speakers at the 2nd annual National Owner Conference, to be held at Gulfstream Park from January 11-14th. Robb will be speaking on a panel called "Acquiring Your Thoroughbred Racehorse - What Are Your Options?" on Tuesday, January 12th, and will be speaking at several breakout sessions during the conference.