Now 6, Best Pal winner Weston has won 14 straight on the Northwest fair circuit
?q=100)
The first time Idaho trainer Mark Hanson saw Weston he was visiting his brother Ryan’s offtrack stable in California in early 2020. Mark Hanson was not impressed.
“He was kind of scrawny,” Hanson recalled last weekend. “I thought, how is this thing going to win on the Southern California circuit?”
Hanson’s first impression was a little off the mark. Not only did Weston win a maiden race at 21-1 in his debut at Santa Anita in June 2020, but in his second start he won the Grade 2 Best Pal Stakes at Del Mar that August.
Weston was later third in the Del Mar Futurity, the first of nine consecutive losses through May 2022 at Southern California tracks. By then, with Weston uncompetitive in $20,000 claimers, Ryan Hanson decided Weston needed out of California.
“He knew the horse was still healthy,” Mark Hanson said. “He needed a change of scenery.”
Weston was shipped to Mark Hanson that spring and has not lost since. With help from stewards on one occasion, Weston has won 14 consecutive races in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon at distances ranging from 950 yards against Quarter Horses to 5 1/2 furlongs.
“He takes his racetrack with him,” Hanson said.
:: DRF's Del Mar Handicapping Packages: Get everything you need to play the races with confidence.
The winning streak includes four wins at the Eastern Idaho State Fair in Blackfoot; three at both the Crooked River Roundup fair meeting in Prineville, Ore., and White Pine County Fair in Ely, Nev.; and one win at Great Falls, Mont.; Grants Pass, Ore.; Pocatello Downs in Idaho; and the Eastern Oregon Livestock Show in Union.
Welcome to the American Northwest. Yes, most racing fans would be unable to match those tiny venues with their racetrack abbreviations. (The Eastern Oregon Livestock Show is UN, while the Crooked River Roundup is Prv, by the way).
For trainers such as Mark Hanson, racing in that part of the country means as much as Del Mar does to a Californian or Keeneland to a Kentuckian.
“These little tracks, they have a stigma about them, that it’s not good racing or good horses,” Mark Hanson said. “It couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“This year, we went to a few new places. The excitement level to see a horse like this come to some of these tracks is nothing like I’ve experienced. They love their racing.”
In those small communities, the brief race meetings are among the few live sporting events in the summer. Some spots have rodeos during their fairs. For a weekend or two, the fairs alter schedules.
“We just went to Ely, Nevada, and at a lot of these little fair tracks, the town shuts down,” Hanson said. “If you want to get a hamburger after the races, you better get it at the fair. The restaurants are closed.”
Weston, a 6-year-old gelding by the War Front stallion Hit It a Bomb, races for Mark and Ryan Hanson, and their sister Theresa, under their RTM Stables banner. Weston has won 16 of 25 starts. In four starts this year, he has earned $18,315. No one is getting rich.
Mark and his wife, Ashley, live in Pocatello, where Weston is kept most of the time in a pasture. The Hansons have mowed a running lane in the pasture to exercise Weston. An outdoor life suits Weston, Hanson said.
“He doesn’t like being in a stall,” he said. “The key is we have a little bit of acreage.
“We turn him out every day. He’s in the pasture and grazes and rolls in the sun. He comes back in the stall at night and gets his dinner.
“In my opinion, along with the class relief and the half-mile bullrings, that has the been the one key difference that he’s getting now. You don’t get that in Southern California.”
Weston won an allowance race by 12 lengths at Ely on Aug. 18 in his last start. Hanson hauled a group of horses to the Tillamook County Fair on the Oregon coast earlier last month, but Weston did not start when a race failed to fill. The next objective is the $12,000-added Daily Courier Stakes at 5 1/2 furlongs at Grants Pass on Sept. 9.
Weston has finished first in all of his starts since leaving Southern California with the exception of a second by a neck in the $5,050 Jim and Saundra Evans Memorial Stakes at five furlongs at Blackfoot on Sept. 8, 2023. The winner was ruled to have interfered with Weston in the stretch, resulting in Weston being promoted to first.
Following that race, Weston did not race again until Memorial Day weekend this year, winning a five-furlong stakes at Pocatello. The upcoming race at Grants Pass may be his last race of 2024.
“I try not to think too far ahead,” Hanson said. “Fortunately, we’re in a situation that we only run him when he’s just right. If he comes out healthy, we may look for another race on a bullring.
“There’s nothing that prevents us from pulling his shoes.”
If that occurs, Weston will not race again until the spring. That, in its own right, is something to look forward to.
“That sucker is going to run for you,” Hanson said. “He’s the type of horse you get out of bed for.”
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.