What a week for Whitehall
A barrage of bolts struck the area surrounding the Downs on Canada Day evening, forcing the cancellation of the remaining races with one of the largest crowds ever in the stands, but most of those in attendance braved the rain for a fabulous fireworks display at 10:30 p.m.
Jockey Antonio Whitehall prevented the second lightning strike of the week in the final race Wednesday when he won with favourite Big Ticket for trainer Will Tourangeau, wearing down 69-1 second-place finisher Really Slow and jockey Neville Stephenson in a long drive to prevail by three-quarters of a length.
George Williams / Free Press
Jockeys Antonio Whitehall (right) and Damrio Bynoe work a pair of two-year-olds for trainer Mike Nault at the Downs on Friday morning.
The $1 Pick 4 paid $956.90 from a Pick 4 wagering pool of $163,626 and made a lot of bettors happy, except the one holding the lone live ticket on Really Slow, which would have exploded the tote board with a payoff of over $100,000. How'd you like to be holding that ticket for the length of the stretch?
The Pick 4 sequence featured two favourites and two longshots. The fourth race was won by favourite Frankly ($5.20), the fifth went to longshot Burn Jakey Burn ($28.70), the sixth to Exotic's Bear ($19.30), and Big Ticket ($3.50) captured the seventh. Whitehall's win on Big Ticket gave the three-time leading ASD rider five wins on the week, including a victory in the $40,000 Frank Arnason Memorial Sire Stakes.
Whitehall dead-heated for the win in the first and only race run Tuesday aboard Commandoslastdance ($2.20) for trainer Mike Nault, and added four more wins on Wednesday. He won the third race, the Frank Arnason Memorial Sire Stakes with Betterlucknexttime ($2.40) for Nault, added another for Nault in the fourth race with Frankly, then won the sixth race aboard Exotic's Bear and followed up in the seventh with the win on Big Ticket.
When asked about his big week, Whitehall was taking it all in stride. 'Godspeed,' he said, pointing skyward while in Nault's barn Friday morning preparing to work a set of two-year-olds.
'You do your best to put your horse in the right spot,' said Whitehall. 'Sometimes you give your horse a perfect trip and he doesn't have anything for you. Other times, you have the horse but can't get the trip you want. When the horses and trips are there, everything works. You just have to be patient.'
Betterlucknexttime, a three-year-old Manitoba-bred by Nonios-Nickel Candy by Silver Deputy, was the best horse in the Frank Arnason, and everything has gone according to plan for him. Bred by Larry Falloon and Denis Huberdeau, he was the sales topper at US$18,429 in the 2023 CTHS Manitoba Yearling Sale, and as a two-year-old he won the rich Buffalo Stakes. He has now earned $US62,434 from a record of 4-2-0 in eight starts and is well on his way to securing championship honours once again.
Owned by the partnership of A2 Thoroughbreds (Nolan Allard, Arthur Roy and his father Jean-Marc Roy) and True North Thoroughbreds (Phil Allard, Pat Beavis, Grant Sissons and Ray Bouchard), Betterlucknexttime is yet another in a line of champions campaigned by Nault and his owners, who have won 11 races this year and over $US100,000 in purses. A2 Thoroughbreds also has some additional partners, some gathered from a seminar, and others who found them through their website at a2thoroughbreds.com.
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Both ownership groups have spent above-average, but not outlandish amounts of money to purchase yearlings at Manitoba and Ontario yearling sales, and they are reaping the benefits with smart management and patient development of their horses. They are also getting excited about this year's crop of two-year-olds.
Entries were taken for the first two-year-old races of the season at the Downs on Friday, and it won't be long before Nault and his owners are in the entry box. Nault, along with trainer Devon Gittens, is among the top two-year-old trainers at the Downs, but with Gittens racking up the wins at Woodbine, Nault could soon be alone at the top locally.
'With the ones that are ready, we'll go,' said Nolan Allard. 'With the ones that aren't, we'll back off a bit. It never works rushing. If you're patient, it pays off over the long term.'
Nault shares his owners' patient philosophy, but he does love to run his two-year-olds.
'It's like opening up a present,' he smiled.
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