Herbie D fighting time in Longacres Mile defense

AUBURN, Wash. – Herbie D, one of the fastest horses to compete at Emerald Downs in recent memory, is back in training after a brief injury hiccup, trainer Robert Gilker said Friday, and Gilker hopes to have Herbie D ready to defend his title in the Grade 3 Longacres Mile on Aug. 24.

Gilker, who trains Herbie D at Hastings in Vancouver, British Columbia, has been forced to treat his stable star with kid gloves because of persistent problems with a suspensory ligament. Herbie D has not started since his Longacres Mile victory last summer, and his training regimen at Hastings was interrupted in April by more injury concerns.

“He was training good, up to a half-mile, but he got out a bit in his last work,” Gilker said. “We’re sensitive to his issues, and he had a new one, so we had to give him some time off.”

Herbie D earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 100 for his Longacres Mile victory, his second successive triple-digit mark. Gilker said he and owners George Robbins and Darcia Doman would like nothing more than to take another shot at the Mile. But with the calendar turning to June and Herbie D at less than 100 percent, time is of the essence.

“We’re getting to be up against it,” Gilker said. “He just started jogging. We’ll do that for a few more days and then turn him around and start galloping. He missed just over a month, so how much we lost, I can’t tell.”

Herbie D has won 10 of 13 starts and earned $337,928. No horse has captured consecutive runnings of the Longacres Mile since Simply Majestic in 1988-89.

“It’s always been the goal,” Gilker said of a return trip to Emerald for the Mile. “We would like to defend our Mile. He’ll tell us what we can do. It’s not about us. It’s all about him.”

Owner Dick McDonnell dies

Dick McDonnell, a popular horse owner in the Pacific Northwest for several decades, died Monday at his home in Seattle. McDonnell had suffered from a lengthy illness, family members said. He was 87.

McDonnell seldom missed a day at Longacres, which closed in 1992. He purchased his first horse in 1958 and had perhaps his best one more than 30 years later when his homebred Go See Sam captured the 1989 Spokane Futurity at Playfair. McDonnell employed a handful of trainers over the years, including his son, Wayne McDonnell, Dennis Ward, and Tim McCanna.

“He was a great guy, and he understood the game,” McCanna said. “He was such a good sport – winning, losing, he kept it all in stride. I remember the Go See Sam days; Dick was just a fun guy to be around. He was one of the true characters of the racetrack.”

In addition to his racing involvement, McDonnell was prominent in the boxing community as a trainer and promoter. He was a 2002 inductee into the Pacific Northwest Boxing Hall of Fame.

Dronen on a roll

Trainer Sam Dronen has never been a big fish around Emerald Downs. He had started 50 horses at Emerald prior to the current season and recorded four victories – about one per summer. But Dronen, who is based at Portland Meadows, has been hot through the early stages of the meeting, with three wins and two runner-up finishes from eight starts.

Dronen will try to add to his recent haul when he sends out Miss Madavor in Sunday’s seventh race, a $5,000 claimer for fillies and mares at one mile. Miss Madavor, owned by Dronen’s wife, Carol, has won six of her past seven starts, dating to a Nov. 10 victory in Portland.

Sam Dronen, 70, is a self-taught trainer who got his start in the mid 1980s. A North Dakota native, he grew up around horses and sopped up as much knowledge as he could from veteran trainers such as N.E. “Nub” Norton while learning his craft.

“I worked with Nub for the last five or six years he was alive,” Dronen said. “I’d help him out, and when he’d get a horse that he didn’t want, he’d send it down to me. Like he always said, good horses make good trainers. He had better horses than I did, but he also had better clients. Nub fed ‘em good. He could pick a horse out and jog it two steps and tell what was wrong with it. He was just a good horseman.

“But I’ve picked up little things from other people over the years, too. You never stop learning in this business.”

Dronen needs just one victory to set a personal best for wins at an Emerald meeting.

“Things are going real well,” he said. “I’ve got four horses in this week. I think Miss Madavor will run good. I jumped her up a little bit, but I think she’ll be just fine. Most of my horses, they’re all running good. I’m really happy with what’s going on.”