The Statistic Freak - Lambeth Media

THE STATISTICS FREAK
horses with his friend Alvin Jacobson.
When Jacobson passed away in the spring
of 2007 and his family decided to disburse
his horses, Tucci bought a majority stake of
the two-year-old Credit Winner colt
Napoleon, which Korn and Jacobson had
bred.
Daley trained the horse, who was
lightly staked, to victory in four legs and
the final of the New York Sire Stakes in
2007. The partners staked Napoleon heavily
for his sophomore season but he mis-
December 2010 • The Harness Edge
behaved early on. He was wearing a new
hood by the time the colt reached the
Yonkers Trot final, raced that year in
June.
“We were a co-favourite with Holiday
Credit. We drew inside and this is
where we had enough luck in that one
race that it makes up for all the bad luck
the rest of our career,” Tucci shared.
“Napoleon was cutting the mile and at
the top of the stretch Holiday Credit had
taken the lead and had about a two
Wishing All The Best
To You & Yours This
Holiday Season
www.thehorses.com
length lead on us. At this point we were
saying, let’s just hold on for second, then
Holiday Credit just decided to jump and
go off stride.
“My only experience up to that point
was a few sire stakes wins by Napoleon.
When we bought him, that was my entre
into stakes racing,” explained Tucci. “Winning
the Yonkers Trot with your first horse
like that was indescribable.”
After the Yonkers Trot, the colt was
sick in his Hambletonian elimination and
failed to advance, but scored a career
mark 1:53 in the Townsend Ackerman
the following week. Napoleon now
stands stud in Italy, but remains the
fourth highest earner ($789,229) and
fifth fastest (1:53) offspring of his sire
Credit Winner.
Last year Tucci and Daley won the
three-year-old Pennsylvania Sire Stakes
championship with Doubleshotascotch, a
Dragon Again gelding who has now
earned $471,805. And this year Tucci and
Lambert teamed up on freshman New
York Sire Stakes champ Townslight
Hanover ($173,552).
The gelding is by Bettors Delight out
of the dam of Riggins, himself a NYSS
champion with more than $800,000 in
career earnings. But the trainer-owner
team only picked out Townslight Hanover
at Hanover Shoe Farms when returning a
yearling who suffered from a serious case
of EPM.
The farm felt the soon to be gelding
had a strong pedigree and called him the
best Bettors Delight yearling they ever
bred, but he was kept out of the sales
because an injury had healed with a large
unsightly bump. Tucci and Lambert took
the risk and made a deal with Hanover to
take the horse.
Townslight Hanover went on to win
the New York Sire Stakes final at Yonkers
this September despite drawing post five
in a race with two coupled entries. An
early speed duel left Townslight plenty of
room to breeze three-wide in the final
turn and win in 1:54, a new track record
for freshman geldings.
In the background of his success, racing
in Tucci’s home state of New Jersey is
facing what could be its last few breaths if
an agreement to keep the tracks open
isn’t reached soon.