Racing Star hopes to be hot stuff in She's A Great Lady

Chestnut fillies have a reputation for being hot–-and if her performance in the eliminations for the upcoming $672,000(C) She's A Great Lady final for 2-year-old distaff pacers is any indication, Racing Star is hot stuff, indeed.

A daughter of Four Starzzz Shark, out of the Life Sign mare, In For Life, Racing Star is a homebred from the White Birch Farm of Allentown, N.J., and made her first foray north of the border last week, when she defeated Bob McIntosh trainee West of LA to win her $35,000 elimination in a new lifetime-best clocking of 1:53.3.

"She’s definitely a bit of a handful," trainer Jeff Stafford confirms. "She’s a very high-strung filly, she’s got that red gene. Four Starzzz Shark has been throwing a few red ones.

"She’s always acted like she had a lot of talent, it’s just a matter of keeping her head screwed on straight. Fortunately, she’s been a different horse up here (in Ontario). She’s much better behaved than she is at home!

"We have a whole routine to keep her quiet," he elaborates. "She walks before she jogs, you have to keep her all the way to the outside of the racetrack…it’s no good fighting with her, you’ve got to negotiate.

"She carries her head way up high. We tried to crank her head down but she just gets mad. She flipped her palate in the elim for the Sweetheart (at the Meadowlands, July 24) so she wears a choke plate and a tie-down, which looks kinda stupid, but for now it’s what works on her.

"She’s good gaited, though, and she never wears boots. Before she’s done I think she’ll be a high-speed horse. She definitely has the talent," Stafford says. "The good thing is that she usually minds her manners at the races."

Stafford says the decision to enter Racing Star in the She's A Great Lady was a last-minute one. "She was already entered at Pocono and we ended up doing a judge’s scratch when the owners decided to give her a shot up here." But since Stafford was already heading to Mohawk with veteran pacer, Darlin's Delight, for the Breeders Crown, it was an easy alteration of course to make-–and judging from last week’s elimination, a very good call indeed.

"She’s been training good and eating good since we got up here, so everything’s a go at this point," Stafford says, who expects to take Racing Star home to New Jersey for a rest after the She's A Great Lady, then return for the Three Diamonds in October. (WEG)

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