McKnight's runners adapting to dirt surface

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – A question Oaklawn Park horseplayers are facing on a regular basis this meet is whether Norm McKnight trainees will successfully transition to dirt. Many of the horses in his barn have little or no experience on dirt tracks after spending the bulk of their careers racing on either synthetic or turf surfaces at Woodbine.

McKnight made his way to Oaklawn for the first time a year ago and finished seventh in the local standings with 16 wins from 80 starts. He’s back again for the new meet and has brought more than double the number of horses he did last year.

McKnight has 53 in place, with some of those runners at a local training center. Last year, he brought 24 head to Oaklawn. McKnight is off to a fast start this season, ranking second in the trainers standings to perennial leader Steve Asmussen with a record of five wins from 19 starts.

“Obviously, we’re happy to have started as well as we have,” said McKnight, a 62-year-old native of Ontario, Canada.

McKnight’s winners this meet have included three horses making their first start on dirt: Rock n’ Candy, Giant Pulpit, and Redeal, with two of those runners stepping up in class off a claim at Woodbine.

“When we’re at Woodbine, we’re looking for horses we feel will dirt,” McKnight said. “We do research. A lot of horses coming out of Woodbine have never run on the dirt. We look back into the family to see if the mother, the siblings ran on the dirt. How many starts? How well did they do? That’s one of the things we look at.”

McKnight also looks for horses who performed well in limited dirt starts. A shining example is Cool Catomine, a 5-year-old who won a $10,000 starter allowance last month at Oaklawn with the second-best Beyer Speed Figure of his career, a 78. His best Beyer had been earned on dirt at 3, an 80 for a win in the second leg of the Canadian Triple Crown, the $500,000 Prince of Wales at Fort Erie.

“We claimed him toward the end of the meet with the game plan he would hopefully move forward on the dirt,” said McKnight.

McKnight said some horses just don’t make the transition despite pedigree support or good works at Oaklawn. One recent starter, he said, came back from his race covered in dirt after being pelted by kickback in an experience that discouraged the runner.

But the success stories outnumber those cases. Smart Spree, who won three straight races a year ago in Arkansas while climbing the class ladder, is back from a freshening and again targeting Oaklawn.

McKnight, a former Standardbred trainer and driver, is coming off the best year of his Thoroughbred training career and for the second year in a row is a Sovereign Award finalist for Canada’s outstanding trainer. He won 149 races last year, and the horses in his care earned $4 million in purses. The success eclipsed his previous best win totals and stable earnings of 99 and $2.1 million achieved in 2017.

“I’ve been blessed with good clients,” McKnight said. “They’ve been very supportive in the decision-making process of where we place the horses to run. I think that’s a lot of it. We’re very fortunate with our clients, to be able to spot horses where we think they can win or have a shot to win.”

Lately, it’s simply been on dirt.