The ‘guvner‘ ROGER ATTFIELD, member of two horse racing Halls of Fame, continues to send out winners in Florida while many of his mates await racing to begin in Ontario.
Attfield and his team at idyllic Payson Park in Stuart, FL, sent out three winners on the weekend for three different sets of owners, bringing the 2020 record for the barn to six wins from 33 starts. Roger has 1,962 wins, just 38 from the 2,000 mark.
On Monday morning Roger, who just turned 80 last November, was headed out to the track at 9:15 am with another set of horses at Payson. “It’s getting very hot. I always have a lot of water with me and I’m staying healthy.”
During a very scary and uncertain time because of the deadly COVID-19 virus, horse racing is on hold in most places, but Florida’s Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs have been making racing work.
“We are fortunate to have racing down here; I don’t know what we would be doing if there wasn’t,” said Roger. “It’s very good. We are able to keep racing because no one can go to the races. I send two people down with the horse to race and that’s it.”
Roger watches the horse race from his Florida home and trains at the stable every morning at Payson, also implementing safety measures.
This weekend’s three winners all came on the turf and the winning trifecta began on Saturday when GRAY’S FABLE, a five-year-old gelding, won a maiden allowance on April 18, one mile in 1:33 4/5 for a solid 86 Beyer Speed Figure.
This guy did not make his career debut until November at Woodbine when he finished third in a Tapeta. He has blossomed since that opener for owners Kari Provost, Steve Goldfine and breeder Jeff Zlonis. Zlonis bred the Gio Ponti gelding in Kentucky and bought him back as a yearling for just $7,000.
On Sunday, April 19, ETERNAL PEACE, owned and bred by Robert Evans in Kentucky, returned from a 13-month layoff to win her maiden on the grass at 9 to 1. The War Front filly (out of a Galileo mare) debuted in March of 2019 at Gulfstream and finished fifth before going to the sidelines.
“She is a very nice filly,” said Roger about Eternal Peace. “I rushed her a bit to get her to that race so she had a right to get a bit tired.”
And in race 10 on Sunday, Bill Werner’s NO WAY JOSE (Ire) won in her third start off the layoff in a one-mile turf race in 1:37.91, taking an allowance/optional claiming event with a late rally. The four-year-old filly was a winner sprinting on an all-weather surface overseas for breeder C. Hanbury before she was obtained by Werner sometime since her last start of 2019 in the summer.
One race that did not go as well was the very troubled journey endured by Canadian-bred PLEASECALLMEBACK, a Queen’s Plate hopeful who was lucky not to have fallen in a turf allowance race that was roughly run.
Pleasecallmeback is one to tab for his next start.
Roger said he has a few more runners for Gulfstream in the middle of May before he begins “winding his way back” to Ontario.
Some of his big name stars are a bit in limbo, however. ELIZABETH WAY and multiple stakes winner TIZ A SLAM are doing well but were hoping for stakes runs on the grass at Churchill Downs, which has yet to open.
His own filly, homebred GUN SOCIETY, a stakes winner at two last season, is “doing super” and could start in a race soon in the south.
While he is not in a hurry to send his fit and race-ready horses to Woodbine just yet since there are no timed workouts allowed, he did say he will have some horses arrive there soon.
“I will probably send some horses to Woodbine from farms in the next week to give people some work up there,” said Roger.
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