Mr Havercamp may hit road in search of turf race

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Mr Havercamp returned from a six-month layoff to win the $125,000 Steady Growth Stakes by 4 3/4 lengths over Where’s the Widget on Saturday at Woodbine. He was wide throughout the race over 1 1/16 miles on Tapeta, but came home strongly under jockey Eurico Da Silva.

“He’s such a good horse,” trainer Catherine Day Phillips said. “Eurico said he had so much horse. He said at the half-mile pole everyone was riding and he was sitting there cruising. He thought he would stay out of everyone’s way and go wide.”

Looking ahead to Mr Havercamp’s next start, Day Phillips said she may have to look out of town. Day Phillips said she would be looking to get Mr Havercamp back on the turf. The Grade 2, $175,000 King Edward Stakes on the Queen’s Plate undercard on June 30 would suit Mr Havercamp well, but comes too soon.

“The perfect race is the King Eddie, but it’s in two weeks,” she said. “That was a race we really would have wanted to go into, but it seemed hard to go in there off of a big layoff. We needed to get a race under his belt to get him going and see where he was at. He really did come to hand quickly in the last couple of weeks, and so it sort of made sense to kick on.”

Mr Havercamp has shipped before, when he traveled to Saratoga last season for the Grade 3 Saranac Stakes, finishing a troubled fifth. Day Phillips said she believes Mr Havercamp is of graded-stakes caliber.

“I do think he’s that quality,” she said. “I just think he’s very good. We’ll figure it out. I think probably a mile or a mile and an eighth is his ideal distance. There’s a couple options whether we aim at a mile distance or if we start to stretch out a little bit.”