Harness: Deo Volente welcomes Six Pack

World champion trotting stallion Six Pack was welcomed this week to his new home at Deo Volente Farms by farm CEO Michael J. Gulotta and members of the farm’s staff. The celebration also included a visit from Sarah Svanstedt, whose husband, Ake, trained and drove Six Pack throughout the trotter’s award-winning and record-setting career.

Six Pack, a 4-year-old by Muscle Mass out of Pleasing Lady, won 19 of 35 career races and $1.93 million in purses. He was a Dan Patch Award winner at age 3, when he became the fastest sophomore trotter in history with a time of 1:49 1/5 in winning the Kentucky Futurity. This season, he became the fastest 4-year-old male trotter with a 1:49 2/5 victory in the Allerage Open Trot.

No other trotter in history has recorded sub-1:50 wins in multiple years. He closed his career with a track-record 1:50 victory in the TVG Series Open Trot championship last month at The Meadowlands. The performance gave Six Pack an unparalleled four lifetime wins of 1:50 or faster.

In addition to the TVG, Kentucky Futurity and Allerage, Six Pack’s wins included the Yonkers Trot, a Matron, a division of the Stanley Dancer, a New York Sire Stakes championship, and Empire Breeders Classic.

“He’s very good gaited,” Ake Svanstedt said when Six Pack retired. “He’s a big horse and heavy but he has a very light gait. He handled the short tracks in New York very good. When he won the Yonkers Trot, I let him go the last quarter full speed. I think it was the fastest I ever drove in a turn on a half-mile track. He was always perfect gaited. Never took a wrong step.

“Of course, he had a good head. He was very nice to handle and drive.”

Six Pack is owned by Ake Svanstedt Inc., Little E-Knutssontrotting (a partnership of Jeff Gural and Tristan Sjoberg), Stall Kalmar Inc. (Tomas Olofsson), and L Berg Inc. (Lars Berg).

“We are thrilled to have a stallion of Six Pack‘s stature at Deo Volente Farms,” Gulotta said. “This is proof that New Jersey is retaking its place of preeminence in the Standardbred racing world. This is thanks to the vision of New Jersey legislative leaders, Senate President Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Coughlin, as well as Governor Phil Murphy, who have shown tremendous support of the racing and breeding industry in our state.”

-edited release (Deo Volente Farms)