Francis Richard realistic with three 8-posts

By his own admission, with a stable made up mainly of young horses, it is quite rare that harness racing trainer Francis Richard is so active so early in the season.

The situation in 2021 is a little different since he currently has in his stable a few older horses that meet the conditions well, especially in the so-called feature events. This is the case in this second program of the young season at the Hippodrome 3R Friday (3:00 pm) afternoon with three starters, three from the eighth position.

What to do with the 8th position?  

It is well known that the eighth position on a half-mile track like H3R is quite a challenge. Yes, sometimes horses darting from 8th position win, but especially in lower classes. From the first program of the season last week, Diamond Rock, Lise Carbonneau’s horse from trainer Pierre Leclerc, with Pascal Bérubé to the guides, demonstrated this. But it was a class of non-winners of a race.

For Richard, winning the lead is no easy task: “The mare Topsill Beach won last week but she enjoyed a nice mile,” Francis said. “An ultra-fast first half helped  her. I thought the best mare in this group was Daniel St-Pierre’s mare, Arrhytmogenic. My mare, whom I claimed on the last day of racing in Mohawk, had qualified well but I would not have thought she would have won. We’ll see this week.”

First departures in addition

According to Richard, what does not help in addition to being handicapped by the 8th position is that his two other starters on Friday, Dreydl Hanover and Profound Paragon will be in their first start in a long time:

“We must not forget that the mare of my good friend Jean-Bernard Renaud,” Richard explained. “Before his qualification on April 1, he had not raced since October. That’s a long time. Jean-Bernard is a good friend of mine, so when he saw that we were racing at H3R, we started to think that maybe some of his horses could do well here.”

“I moderate my expectations,” Richard added. “However, since, yes, the mare has earned  a lot of money in 2020 as a three-year-old; this time, she faces some pretty tough elderly experienced horses. As for Dreydl Hanover, I’ve only had him a few days. This is for me the first horse for the owner François Morin. He qualified well, that’s all I can say at the moment. In all three cases, it will be a good challenge, no doubt!”

Two days of racing this week

The race office at H3R pulled off a miracle this weekend. Remember that the final decision to add racing on Friday came only on Tuesday and the next day, the race office came alive to fill two programs, the one on Friday and the one on Sunday. One thing is to have horses in numbers, another that of being able to classify them in races that do them justice.

Among the things that can be seen on this second H3R race program on Friday, we highlight in broad strokes a few facts: the professional debut of Jessica Turenne, who has passed her ten qualifying lines in record time. According to Manon Gravel, who can be trusted when it comes to such statistics, it is very rare for a rookie, male or female, to pass their ten races without missing a single one. At best, we try a dozen times to succeed ten, but Jessica, the daughter of Serge Turenne and Linda Bélanger, made the stroke of a ten out of ten! Jessica will drive her Angelo Benjo to the 3rd  race and he has a rating of 7/2.

Stéphane Brosseau will have a busy afternoon as he will be at work in all ten races! One more testimony, if one were needed, of his great popularity to the trainers. Pascal Bérubé and Samuel Fillion followed with seven drives each.

A word of advice to punters: it would be surprising if Guy Gagnon, the Rideau champion, came to H3R to watch the races. He was relatively quiet on May 7,  but it could be much more visible this week.

Post time Friday is 3:00 pm and Sunday at 12:30 pm.

For a free race program and more information about the Hippodrome 3R, visit www.hippodrome3r.com.