Sorella on all things Jimmy Freight

Harnesslink caught up with Adriano Sorella this week to chat about his harness racing superstar, Jimmy Freight (Sportswriter), whom he currently owns in partnership with Let It Ride Stables Inc and Jimmy Freight Stable, and about the early returns on the stallion’s first crop, many of which have raced this summer.

On Jimmy Freight’s possible return to racing as he recovers from an injury:“He’s back in training with Brett (Pelling). The (tendon) tear was nine per cent. It’s not in the best spot, but they say he is 100%. I don’t know what to make of 100%, I’ve heard that tossed around so many times. Bottom line is, they show it to you on the racetrack. We spend hundreds of thousands on babies based on this family, that family, I always say: the proof is in the pudding, it’s on the racetrack. The same with Jimmy’s babies racing this season – it’s going to be on the racetrack. He’s back and he trained last Saturday, and he was good. I keep hearing “no news is good news”. That’s what (partner) Eric Cherry tells me when I text him asking about Jimmy. The aim here – if he comes back and he is alright, and we have time – is to bring him back here for the Canadian Pacing Derby (in late September at Mohawk Park).

On Jimmy Freight’s first crop so far:

“I mean, he had such a small book, there were only 24, and look where they all end up: there are two in Iowa, and there is one in Indiana, one in Quebec, they are spread out all over the place,” he said. “For the ones that are here, I mean, they are racing well, ya know? We still haven’t really seen Jack’s (Darling), and I spoke with Chantal Mitchell, and she really likes hers. She thinks he is a nice colt, but he was just a little bit behind. From what I understand, he is going to qualify in the next week or so, and race.”

They look like Jimmy Freight:

“Yeah, they do. They all have the same style of racing, and it’s strange because they are all different sizes. I guess many of them inherit the size from the dam’s side, because Louis’ (Roy) is big (referring to Resilience, out of Mia Seelster, who won her debut in an OSS Grassroots race 1:52.2 by eight lengths). She’s a big filly. She goes the same way as Jimmy out there on the track. I like them and I’m going to tout them because I expected them to be good. But it’s not for breeding, because he isn’t breeding right now. The plan is to race him and that’s his job right now until we decide differently. I honestly believed that he was going to have good babies, though.

As for the first crop, so far, so good:

“He’s got a small crop and it’s nice that it’s going this way so far. He has so many disadvantages and, you know, I posted this morning the stat that his offspring have earned $13,000 per start. People can say: “Ah, but it’s only five starters. Well, he only had 24 in the crop, and two of them I already know aren’t going to make it to the races. I knew that a while back. So, the fact that he has nine that have raced and 12 that have qualified or schooled is pretty cool. Mark Weaver must have liked something to buy into Louis’ filly (Resilience).

And the second crop which are yearlings now?

“There were 13 on the ground, and Winbak got eight of them, so I guess they won the lottery. There is one in Perth, Ontario and three are at Princeton Farms, two of which I own. They will be sold at Harrisburg this fall. There is another one in Iowa. To me, I like the ones that are racing now have been going. We’ll see what happens next year. There have been a lot of discussions among the partners about where he is going next. He’s nine. He’s not going to retire to a field I can tell you that right now. He’s gonna stand stud someplace. The question is where? We are tossing the idea around about a couple of places. Look at Bettors Wish – imagine he has a small crop of 39 and he just won all the sires stakes in New Jersey. But there aren’t 20 stallions there like there are in Ontario.

On the Jimmy Freight Stakes:

“Jessica Buckley was the original person I dealt with two years ago when I set up the Jimmy Freight Stakes. It’s their track, their rules. I was just putting up the money. The rules right from day one stated that there must be a minimum of eight starters. The problem with having a race restricted to offspring of one stallion is what if you only end up with six starters, and one that’s good and five that are horrible? We didn’t know when we organized the race that he was going to have issues with his semen and a small first crop on the ground. The reason they went with eight starters is they want to know that it’s going to be competitive, and we don’t have a four-horse field. They also stipulated that each horse must have two starts at Mohawk Park because they want to fill their cards. They don’t want them all racing elsewhere and just shipping in. It’s not much different than some rules they have in the states.

“I didn’t care. I was paying money to support my stallion. Any way you shake it, I’ve gotta pay a hundred grand and the other part of the deal that people didn’t even know was I had to also spend a minimum amount of money advertising with WEG themselves. They added the rule that each starter must have $10,000 in earnings once we realized the crop was so small. They wanted to make sure you don’t end up with horses that school, qualify then enter a race where you have a pacer that can go in :52 and everyone else is going 2:05. It doesn’t make any sense for them.”

On the final rule changes and current status of the Jimmy Freight Stakes

“I started to see some negative feedback on social media, and I wanted to remove the two start minimum and I never wanted the minimum eight starters from the get-go. I even had a joke about it and said: if there is only one lone entrant, let’s have a match race – they gotta race me around the racetrack. I start seeing negative feedback and I’m like, are you friggin’ kidding me? I’m going to put up the money, now this – I never got any breedings out of it but I’m not mad or bitter. I just want to bring Jimmy back and get over the $2 million earnings mark. (He needs $42,590).

“My thoughts were, I’m getting this negative publicity, but I didn’t put these conditions in place. But Jessica Buckley isn’t there anymore. Director of Racing Bill McLinchey got this handed to him, and he has been so cooperative and so nice. He contacted me and said WEG was going to put out a news release with the 2019 conditions and I said okay, not really thinking too much about it. Once it got released, there was a lot of negative feedback and I thought: you know what, these people are right. These rules were created before he even started breeding. At this point, WEG has my purse and advertising money, and people are complaining, mainly about the $10,000 earnings condition more than anything else. Bill called and asked me how the feedback was, and I replied: you probably called at the worst time. I can’t believe some of what these people actually think.

“But it was usual suspects on social media. The people that actually own the horses weren’t saying anything negative. I asked Bill to change the conditions. My thought was this race has to go. He agreed to remove the earnings and two start minimum condition and remove the minimum eight starters. He said WEG has a minimum five starter rule for a stake race, and those are the new conditions.”

So, it looks like on October 7th, the Jimmy Freight Stakes, sponsored by Adriano Sorella, with a $100,000 purse, is a go.

by Garnet Barnsdale, for Harnesslink