Snowden hopes patient approach pays off with Disruption

AUBURN, Wash. – These are heady times for Monique Snowden, when her seemingly endless 14-hour workdays can finally turn into something more tangible. The 35-year-old trainer has never had a stakes winner, but she’ll have a serious contender Sunday when she sends out Disruption in the $50,000 Governor’s Handicap at Emerald Downs.

Snowden fell into Disruption over the winter, when the horse’s owner, Heidi Nelson, decided to change trainers. Snowden had been admiring Disruption from afar, watching the horse go through his paces at a breeding farm and training center near Emerald Downs. Disruption, a 4-year-old by Street Boss, had been sidelined since last June, when he ran second in the Auburn Handicap for 3-year-olds.

“I had seen him out at Griffin Place,” Snowden said of the farm where she breaks horses and where Disruption was enjoying his winter respite. “He’s just magnificent. He’s gorgeous. When she gave me the horse, it was like being offered a Ferrari to drive. It was really cool. He chipped a knee and an ankle last year. He had a long layoff. But [Nelson] did the surgery and did all the right things with him. But he didn’t have a clean slate, and I had my work cut out for me.”

To get Disruption back on the beam, Snowden put the horse through an unusual training regimen, with abundant work in the show ring to go with long, slow gallops. Snowden, who exercises her own horses, said she often would ride Disruption for 45 minutes at a time.

“He was sound, but he was really out of shape,” she said. “I started out in February doing dressage work in the ring. It’s like yoga for humans. We’re doing lots of circles, serpentines, a lot of transitions from trot to canter to trot. I think it makes horses use themselves in a more complete way. On the racetrack, you’re just going in one direction. Some racehorses don’t have the ability to concentrate. They don’t like it. But he loved it. We put on a lot of muscle. And then I would take him to the track, do some slow galloping, and mix that in with the dressage work. We brought him along slowly.”

Disruption should have a solid foundation for his first start of the year. He has gone six furlongs in each of his past three workouts, capped by a handy 1:11.60 move May 8.

“He’s been great lately. He’s been working fantastic,” Snowden said. “It’s hard to keep him focused on the longer works without company, but he’s always been fast. He breaks super, super hard. He looks the part. He’s super fit. Everyone stops and stares when he goes by.”

Snowden makes no attempt to downplay the significance of having a big horse in the barn. She has only three other runners right now, and her workdays are taxing. Her husband, Dennis Snowden, a former trainer and Emerald valet, was hired on this year as the assistant trainer to Frank Lucarelli. His hands are full, so Monique Snowden goes it mostly alone.

“Lucarelli offered him the job, which is a great opportunity,” Snowden said. “So, he works for Frank, and he helps me out, but I’m definitely the one calling the shots. I do everything myself – gallop ’em, groom ’em, do the stalls. I’m here from 4 in the morning to 5 or 6 at night. They get treated like the best professional athletes.”

Nelson paid $90,000 for Disruption at a Florida sale in 2012, early in his 2-year-old year. He made his first start in November 2012 for trainer Blaine Wright at Golden Gate Fields. Disruption won a maiden race there in March 2013 and took a first-level allowance sprint a month later. In his lone start at Emerald, he finished second, a length behind Finallygotabentley, in the Auburn Handicap at 6 1/2 furlongs. It’s been almost a calendar year since he last competed.

“It’s going to be rough without a prep race,” Snowden said. “We weren’t ready for that allowance race a month ago, so no prep race for us. But he’s had the three-quarter works and a lot of preps. One thing about him, he has so much class and heart. I’m hoping that’s going to come through on race day. I hope he breaks on time, can clear the field, and then let the speed go, and let them battle it out. Hopefully, we can come from just out of it.”

With top Emerald riders Isaias Enriquez and Leslie Mawing committed elsewhere, Snowden will call on Eliska Kubinova to ride Disruption. Just like the trainer, Kubinova has never captured a stakes race at Emerald Downs.

“This is really my first stakes race,” Snowden said Friday as the prerace excitement started to build. “I had Snow On the River on Washington Cup Day, but that’s not like this. This is the biggest race I’ve been in, far and away. We’re the underdog for sure.”