CAMPBELLVILLE, ON — When Snazzy Hot Rod parades onto Mohawk Racetrack in the last of four Gold Eliminations on Thursday evening the two-year-old trotting colt will be blanketed by the shadow of his illustrious older sister, Snazzy Millie.

“He’s got a kind of well known family member to keep up with,” acknowledges the colt’s trainer Tom Durand. “But people have to remember what she was doing at this stage. It took her a long time to put everything together.”

Now a winner of $689,606 and recently returned from a trip to Sweden for the famed Elitlopp Trot, Snazzy Millie’s early success was much more modest. She earned $106,795 in the Ontario Sires Stakes program as a two-year-old and only $31,871 at three.

Clarence and Terry Devos of Langton bred the half-siblings — Snazzy Hot Rod is by Mr Lavec and Snazzy Millie is by Royal Strength — and the pair offered Durand a share in the colt last fall when they bought him back out of the Forest City Yearling Sale for $14,000.

“They offered me a share of him if I liked him, and I said, “He feels good to me,” recalls Durand. “This was back in December.”

Snazzy Hot Rod wintered in Georgia with the rest of Durand’s string and progressed steadily through his lessons. Always a leggy youngster, the colt bloomed in the warm Georgia sun and returned home a towering 16-plus hands.

“He’s very big, a very big horse,” says Durand. “If you lined them (two-year-old trotting colts) all up and measured them he’d probably be the tallest horse in the bunch.

“He’s quite good for his size, but he’s still not as handy as some of the smaller colts who find it easier to come to their speed,” adds the Puslinch resident. “But if he maintains his focus, he’ll be just fine.”

Durand had some concerns about the colt’s focus earlier in the year and had booked an appointment to have Snazzy Hot Rod and three other colts castrated. However, the veterinarian arrived with only two sets of sterile equipment and the colt was spared until the following week.

“That week he improved so much that I said, “We’ll give him a little reprieve here and if he continues to behave we’ll leave him alone,” recalls Durand. “He just got better and better all winter. He’s a real gentleman now.”

Durand readied Snazzy Hot Rod for his racing debut with a pair of qualifiers at Mohawk Racetrack. In the first, on June 9, the colt toured the Campbellville oval on the front end and halted the teletimer at 2:05.2. Two weeks later the colt made several breaks on the way to a 2:05 fourth-place effort, which left his trainer-driver a bit wary heading into the June 29 Gold Series season opener at Kawartha Downs.

“I had to take it a little cautious in that race because he made a mistake the week before in a qualifier and I didn’t want to double up and do the same thing again,” says Durand. “But he raced well, trotted a back half in :58.3, I believe.”

Snazzy Hot Rod finished fourth in that first Gold Elimination and did not advance to the Final, and Durand expects Thursday’s field to present just as a big a challenge.

“When you’ve got to finish in the top two, it’s quite a tall order for any young horse,” says Durand, who will steer Snazzy Hot Rod from Post 8 in the sixth race on Thursday.

“With a big field and the eight-hole, anything can happen, and it’s the same for everybody,” he adds. “It looks like a tough division. The horse of Chris Beaver’s (Smarty Jims) won the final last week and Pat Crowe has got a nice colt (Beef Up) in there too.”

Defending Gold Final champion Smarty Jims will start from Post 1, while Beef Up, who finished fourth in the July 6 Gold Final, will start from Post 3 in Race 6.

Only the top two finishers from each elimination are guaranteed a berth in next week’s $130,000 Gold Final. Two of four third-place finishers will be added to the field by random draw.

The two-year-old trotting colts open Mohawk Racetrack’s Thursday evening program at 7:20 pm and will also square off in Races 2, 4, and 6.

For complete results please go to:

http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/entries/data/emohsth.html