Fanning is a renegade

For five of the eight horses in Saturday’s featured race at the Meadowlands, it is the final prelude to the three-week Presidential Series, which gets underway in mid January. One of those five is Pacific Renegade who is rated at 4-1 in the morning line in the $35,000 winners-over condition pace, carded as the fifth race.

The Presidential, the winter showcase for free for all pacers, offers two weeks of $50,000 preliminary legs beginning Jan. 13 to determine the 10 finalists who will meet for $100,000 (est.) final Jan. 27.

Pacific Renegade, now six, has been a consistent earner, banking more than $275,000 of his $352,705 in career earnings in 2005 and 2006 while facing the top older horses in training.

In addition to Pacific Renegade, the Presidential hopefuls competing in Saturday’s feature include All Over The Place, Roddy’s Bags Again, Bay Sign and Hop Sing.

“Renegade can go with the best horses on his best day,” said trainer Tom Fanning. “He is probably a cut below the best free for allers, but when he is sharp, especially on a smaller track, he can beat almost all of them.”

The son of Cam’s Card Shark has made 90 career starts with 21 wins, 18 seconds and 10 thirds to his credit. He took his lifetime mark of 1:49.1 at the Meadowlands when he was four.

“I really have an affinity for him because we developed him from the end of his two year-old-year on, and he has worked his way up the ladder,” Fanning noted. “He also has a great and totally supportive owner (Joseph Smith of Vero Beach, Fla.) who has only made my job easier and has given this horse the time he needed to develop.”

Missing from this week’s battle of the pacing titans is Nuclear Breeze, who will put his seven-race winning streak on the line in the Presidential.

Another Fanning stakes colt, Artstanding, should be back in action this summer. At two, Artstanding was second in the $593,032 Governor’s Cup, and, at three, he was the runner-up in the $500,000 Anthony Abbatiello New Jersey Classic

“Artstanding is rehabbing a tendon injury and should be back in June,” said Fanning of the 4-year-old son of Artsplace. (Meadowlands)

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