Needs Supervision can give trainer first stakes win in Silverbulletday

The 37-year-old Irish import Jerry O’Dwyer showed up at Laurel Park early in 2017 with three horses and hopes of finding his way as a head horse trainer. It worked. O’Dwyer won 10 races in 2017 and 17 in 2018. His stable swelled to as many as 18 horses this past summer, and though he is down to 10 active runners for winter racing in Maryland, there are a half-dozen or so 2-year-olds slated to stock the barn in the spring.

“Laurel has been very good to me,” said O’Dwyer, who had been fooling around with a handful of horses in Lexington, Ky., before making the move. “Luckily, a few owners came to me, and it snowballed. I was very happy with 17 winners last year.”

On Sunday, O’Dwyer hopes to take his game to an even higher level, this time by leaving Maryland. It’s a short-term move, and with only one horse, a 3-year-old filly named Needs Supervision, who starts Jan. 19 at Fair Grounds in the Silverbulletday Stakes.

O’Dwyer has thrown up goose eggs with his first 11 stakes starters, but Needs Supervision ought to have a decent chance in the Silverbulletday. Second in her career debut Oct. 13, Needs Supervision returned to win a Laurel maiden race by 1 1/4 lengths over Her Royal Highness, an eye-catching first-level allowance winner last weekend in Maryland.

O’Dwyer wanted to try his filly in stronger competition, so he shipped her to Churchill Downs for its juvenile showcase card on Nov. 24. Needs Supervision, a 37-1 shot in a first-level, one-turn-mile allowance, stalked the pace, took over in upper stretch, and won by five lengths.

“I knew she was a nice filly all along, but I didn’t know how good, so I wanted to test her and find out,” O’Dwyer, a former exercise rider for Al Stall and assistant to trainer Andrew McKeever, said of the Churchill race. “She ran beyond my expectation. If she’d finished second or third or fourth, I’d have been over the moon.”

Needs Supervision, owned by Pigeon Hollow Farm, is by Paynter and out of the Carson City mare Moroccan Rose. She got a brief freshening after returning to Maryland in late November, and on Jan. 4 sizzled six furlongs in 1:10.80 while working at Laurel.

“I wanted to get a good work into her, but I wasn’t expecting her to go that fast,” O’Dwyer said. “Visually, she did it beautiful. I was a little angry at the time for going that fast, but when she came back good, I was okay. She’s a mentally and physically tough filly.”

Needs Supervision was to have a much easier work Friday, get a day off Saturday, and travel by van to New Orleans on Sunday. Joe Rocco has a return call in the Silverbulletday, and O’Dwyer is confident the filly will stay two turns if she travels well.

As of Thursday, the Fair Grounds racing office had a list of eight horses it expected to be entered Saturday in the Silverbulletday, including Fun Finder, Sweet Diane, Gold Credit, Bell’s the One, Cowgirls Like Us, Grandaria, and Inthemidstofbiz.