HANOVER, ON — Hanover Raceway kicks off back-to-back presentations of the Ontario Sires Stakes program on Saturday with eight Grassroots divisions for the three-year-old trotting colts.
A wave of newcomers will join the Grassroots veterans in Hanover on Saturday, including Robin Morley’s Will He, who makes his Ontario Sires Stakes debut from Post 5 in the seventh race. The Classic Adam son heads into the $15,000 competition off a 2:00.4 victory at Georgian Downs on July 31 and Morley hopes the young trotter can step up and compete in the provincial program.
“I had Paul Walker tell me how exceptionally well gaited he is, but that has nothing to do with speed. We need more speed,” says the Mildmay resident. “But my wife tells me I am looking for too much too soon.”
Saturday’s outing will only be the fifth start in a campaign that started on July 3 at Hiawatha Horse Park and has already endured its share of ups and downs. Will He made breaks in his first two starts and had to requalify after each one before finally delivering a solid effort at Georgian Downs on July 24 where he sat outside the entire mile and then sprinted home to be second.
“He’s qualified four times at Mohawk. We don’t know why, but he’s a little hot behind the gate,” says Morley. “He’ll be a little excited in the first turn Saturday.”
The racecourse roller coaster is not the first thrill ride Morley and his family have been on since Will He arrived at their Mildmay farm on March 23, 2001. The gelding’s mother, $329,143 winner Marathon Lady, died during his birth, sparking a search for a nurse mare and giving the Morley’s their first glimpse of the horse’s remarkable will to live.
“I wanted to put him down but my wife said, �Not on your life.’ So for two days we searched on the internet for a surrogate mare and then found one 10 miles away through word of mouth. It was a Standardbred mare who had lost her foal,” recalls Morley. “He did well, but he couldn’t stand her. He took the milk from her and then ignored her. She’d be going crazy chasing him around and he’d just ignore her. He had a real desire to live that colt.”
Morley broke the colt as a yearling and trained him down ready for a two-year-old campaign last summer. Will He showed enough promise that Morley entered him in a Gold Series event, but the trotter came down with a virus just days before and had to be scratched. Attempting to give the youngster ample time to heal Morley turned him out, but in an exuberant sprint down the field Will He cracked a sesamoid bone and had to have an operation that put him out of commission for the remainder of the season.
“He had it operated on last fall and it came along good, touch wood,” says Morley, who put the colt back in training once he had fully recovered from the surgery.
Solid training results over the winter had the veteran horseman looking forward to Will He’s sophomore season when the colt developed a breathing problem and once again required specialised veterinary attention.
“He went down to the University of Guelph and they flushed out his lungs and put him on inhalants,” says Morley. “He was on inhalants for two months, but he keeps bouncing back.”
Earning a piece of the Ontario Sires Stakes pie at Hanover Raceway on Saturday would be a Disney-style result for Will He, but regardless of the outcome the gelding has a lifetime home with the Morley’s.
“He’s not for sale. My wife would never sell him. She loves that horse,” says the horseman.
Will He and his peers are featured in Races 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 on Hanover Raceway’s 7:20 pm program on Saturday and the provincial program returns to the popular half-mile oval on Wednesday with Grassroots action for the two-year-old trotting colts.