Fairmount track report

COLLINSVILLE, IL - It can be bittersweet watching one of your favorite horses age. Top Fairmount trainer Ralph Martinez and his exclusive employer, Lou O'Brien, are currently grappling with such emotions as they prepare to retire their barn's classy 9-year-old sprinter Glit after the current Fairmount meet ends on Sept. 18.

"He's getting old," says Martinez of Glit. "He's got to run in the bottom claiming races now. He's getting beat by some cheap horses, and that ain't him. We don't want to embarrass him or anything. He's been good to us, so we'll be good to him."

Martinez plans to run Glit in at least one more sprint before putting the gelding out to pasture.

He intends to run 7-year-old Moe B Dick in Tuesday's one-mile Pete Condellone Handicap Stakes. The Condellone is part of Illinois Day, which will include six $35,000 stakes races for Illinois-breds. But Glit's absence from the festivities will hardly create a vacuum for game 9-year-old geldings, as formidable elders Butterscotch Dave and Tic N Tin are set to run for the money in the Condellone, generally considered to be the card's premier race.

Butterscotch Dave, owned and trained by Robert Lawrence, finished fourth in last year's Condellone, eight lengths behind the winner, Bulldog George. But he turned in an impressive 8 1/4-length victory in his last Fairmount effort on July 24, a one-mile $14,500 allowance race.

Tic N Tin, meanwhile, looks to be winding down a sterling career that has included several stakes wins. Owned by Ron Brandenburg and trained by his brother, John, Tic N Tin has not raced at a mile since he took second in last year's Condellone, a 1 1/4 lengths shy of Bulldog George, who has been running poorly of late and is not nominated for any of this year's Illinois Day races.