Soph pacer OK after fall

Trainer Stacey Ruddick is trying to point AB’s Beach Boy toward a Little Brown Jug start in late September, but the road to Delaware has become a rocky one for the 3-year-old son of Jenna’s Beach Boy. AB’s Beach Boy has had rough trips his last two starts, including falling near the wire in the $178,000 Cleveland Classic at Northfield Park Aug. 19.

“A horse made a break in front of him at Lexington (in the $71,600 Kentucky Summer Championship final Aug. 12) and he got interfered with there and then a horse in front of him made a break at Cleveland,” trainer Stacey Ruddick explained to harnessracing.com Wednesday morning. “Chip (driver Chip Noble) said that horse took to the inside and went inside the pylon and then came back into (Noble’s) path.

“I didn’t know it was him that fell; I thought it was the one that made the break,” she continued. “I watched them pull up in the turn and I saw (driver Dave) Palone’s red (colors) and (Greg) Grismore’s red, and I went, ‘Where’s Chip?’ I didn’t even see him fall because I was behind the toteboard.”

Ruddick said that AB’s Beach Boy suffered only a few scrapes (“He has a little bit of road rash, but other than that he’s OK,” she said) from his Northfield fall and that the colt will make his scheduled start Wednesday night in the $7,600 Parshall Futurity at the Greenville, Ohio fair, with her father, Harold, driving the colt from post two in the five-horse field. Ruddick said that Noble suffered a sore hamstring and back from the spill.

Last year at two AB’s Beach Boy never missed a check while compiling a record of 16-3-9-2 and earnings of more than $65,000 for breeder-owner Ambalal Patel. He posted a career-best 1:53.3 win in the Horseman Stake at the Indianapolis fairgrounds, a time he equaled earlier this year in a conditioned pace at Hoosier Park. This year AB’s Beach Boy has five wins and three seconds in 17 starts, earning $19,170.

“He has some late-closers in the fall at Lexington, and he has the Hayes at DuQuoin, the Jug Preview and hopefully the Jug,” Ruddick concluded. “Last year he had luck and everything went his way. This year, every time we turn around something happens.”

« Back