Shark Gesture ready to race

Tony Alagna, assistant trainer for the Erv Miller stable, reports that all is going well for Breeders Crown entrant Shark Gesture on the eve of the $610,000 Three-Year-Old Colt Pace. Shark Gesture fell in a freak accident in last week’s elimination, which sent the sport's leading driver, John Campbell, to the hospital for a fractured tibia and resulted in another horse being euthanized.

“Everything seems good with him and he’s a cheerful as ever,” Alagna said. “We trained him a couple of singles mid-week here and he was just fine. He came out of the training sessions well and is cleaning up his feed tub like normal.”

Shark Gesture has earned $414,211 to date. He’ll have Brian Sears in the bike for his Breeders Crown Final.

“He’s got little scrapes and bumps on his body, but they’re mostly superficial,” Alagna noted. “It’s just a matter of keeping those clean so that they can heal up properly.”

“This horse is very quiet and very easy to get along with,” Alagna continued. “I think that’s one of the things that saved him from getting really messed up in the accident. When it happened, he just laid there and didn’t really move, and once he was up he didn’t struggle at all. So far it seems like it hasn’t fazed him a bit.

“I trained him out there with other horses around him on purpose,” Alagna added. “We really wanted to see how he was going to be with other horses near him, as he would have in a racing situation. But he just went along and did what he always does. He didn’t seem to be bothered at all.”

Shark Gesture races for the ownership of Norm Smiley of Florida, Gerald Smiley and the TLP Stable of New Jersey.--Kimberly Rinker for the Breeders Crown

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