The great PINK LLOYD won five straight Champion Sprinter awards in Canada, was named Horse of the Year, and retired as one of the greatest sprinters this country has ever seen. And while the famous gelding now greets visitors at the LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Farm in Hillsburgh, he has a younger stablemate who is trying to emulate that great runner.
PATCHES O’HOULIHAN (Reload) kept the Champion Sprinter title going for Ontario owner and breeder Frank DiGiulio, Jr., who was part of Entourage Stables that raced ‘Pinky’. DiGiulio is sole owner of ‘Patches’ and accepted the bay gelding’s award for the 2023 season in which he won six of seven races, a very ‘Pinky-like’ race record.
Trained by Robert Tiller, Patches O’Houlihan and jockey Daisuke Fukumoto won six straight including the Grade 3 Vigil and Bold Venture Stakes before he landed fifth in the Kennedy Road Stakes (G2) to complete a super season.
DiGiulio talked about the fast rise of Patches O’Houlihan last year with Canadian Thoroughbred in this story.
Patches returned to the worktab this spring but after four preps was sidelined for a couple of months. He has three workouts coming into the second running of the Pink Lloyd Stakes, which will be run July 28 at Woodbine. Sofia Vives is named as his new rider.
The Pink Lloyd is a six furlong Tapeta sprint for Ontario-sired four-year-olds and upward and Patches, now a four-year-old, has a couple of tough rivals to take on his return. Stakes winners Secret Reserve (Giant Gizmo) and Mason’s Gamble are the other top contenders in the $100,000 race.
Secret Reserve, owned by Carlo d’Amato and Stacey Van Camp, has one win in the past two seasons and that was in the 1 1/16 mile Steady Growth Stakes last fall. However, the six-year-old was recently fourth to the streaking Cruden Bay, now a Grade 2 winner, in a turf sprint in June and fifth in the Grade 2 Highlander in his most recent race. Mason’s Gamble was second in an allowance/optional claiming race on July 6 and he is reunited with one of his favourite riders, Sahin Civaci.
Last American Exit, bred by DiGiulio but claimed a couple of times through his career, was third in last year’s Pink Lloyd Stakes and second twice to Patches in graded stakes last year. And Reload’s Rascal, who has a super record of five wins in eight races but for three different trainers, tries his first stakes test after an allowance/optional win in June.
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