Following a second disappointing effort at Charles Town our team has come to an agreement with co-owner and breeder Carrie Brogden to retire Always Hopeful. Our team felt strongly that the move to Charles Town would allow him to showcase his speed and ability while facing lesser competition but this did not come to fruition. These two races have showed us his best days are behind him and we believe this is the best decision for the horse.

As a result, Always Hopeful has been shipped back to Machmer Hall, where he was born and raised. He will be allowed to let down from the racetrack and remain there until we can find him a great home. Given he is a high energy horse and will need an experienced rider, we will be patient and make sure we line up the best possible option for him.

Our targeted race option at Charles Town for Always Hopeful was not used on August 17th. In addition, this race was not written back on the overnight and we will now target an allowance non-winners of two races on August 25th. This race is a substitute race in the condition book (see above) and since it is Charles Town Classic Day our assumption would be they would not get to any sub or extra races. Entries will be taken on August 22nd but we will likely be entering again the following day for August 26th. We will follow up next week with any additional race information.

Always Hopeful breezed an official half-mile in 48.00 seconds flat this morning at Charles Town. Under J.D. Acosta, your 4-year-old went three furlongs in 35 and change, galloping out the half on his own to receive the official clocking. Stacey has been very pleased with the progress of Always Hopeful and reports he continues to handle everything great. A few photos prior to his work along with a picture of him in his stall afterward can be seen above.

Next week Always Hopeful will breeze a half-mile and will possibly breeze from the gate. Given the ability to run four and one-half furlongs at Charles Town, it shouldn’t take long for Always Hopeful to come to hand and Stacey feels it’s realistic he will be ready towards the middle to end of June pending all continues well.

Always Hopeful continues to do well post-surgery and is on turnout at Machmer Hall in Kentucky. Carrie Brogden shared some wonderful videos of the gelding enjoying himself at the farm.

Always Hopeful recently shipped down to South Florida to Palm Meadows Training Center for the winter and has been putting in the foundation for a return to the races. Unfortunately, Always Hopeful’s training has not been where all parties would like it to be. Trainer Cherie DeVaux considered his last work at Keeneland to be a “backwards” breeze, meaning the gelding put all of his effort in the early stages and lacked energy to finish the work optimally.

Always Hopeful has always been a difficult horse to train because of his aggressive approach and over the last month he has been especially tough. Not only is his training style taking a toll on him mentally, it also has been demanding on him physically. As you know, this has been an ongoing issue for Always Hopeful since he began training in 2021 and at close to 4 years old now this behavior is unlikely to change despite implementing different training techniques and gelding him.

In assessing his future racing opportunities with our team, Cherie, and our partners, we believe there may be limited upside to continue campaigning Always Hopeful for the long term. The considerations discussed were his distance limitations with how he trains and runs (he’d be limited to the shortest of sprint races), frequency of races, class level, etc. While Always Hopeful may be able to win a first-level allowance race, it would likely come on a smaller circuit with reduced purse money and after that he could quite possibly be relegated to the claiming ranks. And that’s okay if we’re confident he could consistently run and pay his way. But that of course comes with the assumption that he’s able to start stringing together frequent and competitive races. Due to various health issues, he’s only raced three times to this point in his career. With the factors mentioned above, it’s far from a sure thing that he’d be able to accomplish that.

For the short term, we’re going to give Always Hopeful another opportunity to earn his way back into the starting gate and see if he can perform optimally. At the same time, we’ll also enter him in the January sale at Keeneland as an option to have if we’re not seeing that much-needed progression. We’ll check back in with Cherie shortly on additional progress reports and a potential race target.