The Harty Effect
This magical sounding name was stolen from one of my favorite movies, named "The Zero Effect".
The reason this post is being brought into existance is because of an obscure little story that I just read on bloodhorse.
It spoke of a horse that ran out in socal a few years ago that just had his first foal born recently. He stands in Canada, of all godforsaken places.
His name is Terrell. He was a Darley owned son of Distorted Humor. He won his debut like he was the reincarnation of Phone Trick, and then came back about a month later and he looked like On the Line.
At this point, the ol' Harty magic took over and he was sidelined for 11 months. When he came back, he was heavily bet, trained by Drysdale and ran way up the track.
He then ran again a short time later, this time trained by Mullins, and again stunk it up.
He had one more race left in his really sad career. This time, he was again trained by Harty and he ran a much improved second, though he still looked like a broken down claimer compared to his old self.
I just got done watching all of his starts again (at calracing) and got to wondering. Has Harty kept ANY extremely promising youngster together for more than year? I've counted more than I care to remember that he's either ruined or killed, but have yet to think of one that he was able to develop fully.
Of more concern, he seems to have a personal vendetta against my favorite horse, Indian Charlie. Not only did he and Baffert fail to keep him sound, he also, with great speed and effectiveness, ruined the 2yo filly in 2006 that probably would have won the bc juvie filly race. Now those connections have Zada Belle, which makes me fear for her life.
Anyways, I digress.
He reminds me of something between a cross between Alex Hassinger and that Bradshaw clown that trained Artax.
Can anyone think of a Harty trained horse that stayed in good form from 2 on up?
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