Banks notches rare training double
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – At 1:26 Thursday afternoon Chris Banks watched a horse named Sperling finish first in the first race at Arlington. Hurray, and double hurray.
Sperling, claimed by Banks for $5,000 last October at Hawthorne, is the only horse in his stable, and the win was the first of his training career. His Thoroughbred training career, that is.
Having celebrated the milestone, Banks hit the road, driving 65 miles south to the Odds On Acres training center in Crete, Ill. There he picked up a horse he trains named Vegas Bomb. Vegas Bomb is a Standardbred, and Thursday night at Hawthorne she won the sixth race.
That is the rarest of training doubles – a Thoroughbred in the afternoon, a Standardbred in the evening.
Banks, 35, trains just three harness racers right now, but he has been in the Standardbred game basically his entire life, with his father, Larry Banks, having been a driver and trainer on the Chicago circuit. These days the Chicago harness circuit looks a lot like Banks’s stable, which once numbered nearly 20 – diminished.
That’s why he took out his Thoroughbred license last fall and claimed Sperling.
“With the way it is in Illinois, I wanted to take a crack at Thoroughbreds so I could continue my dream,” Banks said. “I’ll probably be looking to switch over full time in the next couple months. I can roll right over from Arlington into the Hawthorne meet.”
Sperling took some patience. Banks said he claimed the horse at Hawthorne, which races on dirt, realizing she excelled on Polytrack but thinking he could bide his time racing her on turf, and that Sperling might at least hold her own on dirt. Didn’t work. Sperling raced terribly on dirt at Hawthorne in her first starts for Banks, and he eventually gave up and waited for the right racing venue. Sperling finished second earlier this month in her first start of the year before a solid Thursday win.
“This is not like harness racing – I found out the hard way,” Banks said.
But for one day, at least, the trainer could say he had conquered both branches of the sport.
