Hoosier Park: Holloway takes aim at Kentuckiana on huge stakes card

Joe Holloway is like most trainers, when something works they stick with it.

Holloway, who will send out a pair of standout juvenile fillies on Friday’s stakes card at Hoosier Park, went to the same well again last fall and plucked a potential star in Zero Tolerance from the Lexington Sale for just $30,000.

“She’s from the family of Rainbow Blue,” Holloway said as to how he managed to look at the daughter of Heston Blue Chip that was clearly ignored by some.

Zero Tolerance is out of a full sister to Rainbow Blue and thus a half-sister to last year’s Kentuckiana Stallion Management winner Rainbow Room who also hailed from the Holloway stable.

Zero Tolerance is likely to be the favorite despite landing post seven in the eight-filly $207,000 event this year. The New York-sired filly was a top earner in the Empire State this year and qualified for Saturday’s Night of Champions but Holloway had never considered going in that direction with this filly.

“I really don’t like to race a 2-year-old too many times over a half-mile track,” said Holloway. “Actually I entered her at Monticello (September 10) because I needed a race or would have had to qualify her again. I didn’t know there was going to be just one division.”

Holloway’s good fortune turned into a major payday as the single New York Sire Stakes went for an impressive $108,300 purse and the 1:58 mile hardly stressed the filly that has now captured six of seven starts during her first year of racing.

“I think she has a chance to be something special,” said Holloway. “After this we’ll send her to Lexington for a few weeks and then the Breeders Crown.”

Five of the eight fillies entered in the Kentuckiana hail from trainer Ron Burke’s stable, with Warrawee Ubeaut, perhaps the best of the quintet, the most unexpected to enter. Last week Warrawee Ubeaut appeared to be ready to capture one of two She’s A Great Lady eliminations at Woodbine Mohawk Park when she suddenly veered to the left in mid-stretch clipping the pacesetter. Clearly the daughter of Sweet Lou who had captured four of her first six races in Pennsylvania came out of the race in good condition. Warrawee Ubeaut landed post three.

In the $236,000 Kentuckiana Stallion Management stakes event for juvenile filly trotters, Holloway hopes Starita will get a big chunk of the purse. By first-crop sire Trixton, Starita has captured three of her last four races with the lone blemish a fourth-place finish in the rich Jim Doherty Memorial on Hambletonian Day at The Meadowlands.

Starita had the presence of an early-season star but Holloway had to make some changes. “She really is a good-gaited filly,” said Holloway, “But when she made a couple of breaks in the early stages we decided to put on the hopples as a security blanket.”

Starita has won her last two most impressively at Tioga Downs, with the September 14 score in a leg of the Kindergarten Series. “We’re going to take her to Lexington as well,” said Holloway. “If she’s competitive we’ll go to the Breeders Crown, but if not she’ll have the Kindergarten to race in.”

Holloway pulls no punches about Friday night’s contest since his filly will meet the undefeated Woodside Charm for the first time. That daughter of Chapter Seven also declined a position in the New York Sire Stakes championship in favor of the Hoosier stakes event.

“She’s a freak,” Holloway said of Woodside Charm.

Woodside Charm enters the Kentuckiana fresh of a mind-blowing and world record shattering 1:53 4/5 victory in a New York Sire Stakes race last week at Saratoga Harness. She drew post eight in a field of nine for trainer-driver Verlin Yoder.

Special Honor (post one) has been idle since the Doherty but the daughter of Father Patrick qualified back nicely on September 4 at Harrah’s Philadelphia. An elimination winner in the Doherty in a career best 1:55 1/5 clocking, the homebred never got on track in the final finishing seventh.

Hoosier Park’s Friday 14-race program begins at 6:30 p.m. with the Kentuckiana Stallion Management events carded as races five and seven.