Sweet Lou in 1:49 World Record.

Sweet Lou's 1:49 fastest for 2YO pacing colt

October 29, 2011
Sweet Lou is the world's fastest 2-year-old after setting a new world record of 1:49 in the $652,535 Breeders Crown Colt Pace final Saturday night at Woodbine Racetrack.

The Ron Burke-trained Sweet Lou loafed through the opening quarter mile, which was covered in :26.1, before driver Dave Palone asked him to accelerate and make his move. Taking command down the backstretch with a big brush to the front in the second quarter (half in :54.3), Sweet Lou was in command at the three-quarters in 1:21.4.

Sweet Lou, the 6-5 favorite, extended his lead in the stretch to capture the Crown final by 7 1/2 lengths. A Rocknroll Dance (Randy Waples) finished second after getting stuck far off the pace and Hurrikane Kingcole (Luc Ouellette) was third.

Sweet Lou, a son Yankee Cruiser-Sweet Future, won his elimination for the Crown as well and now has a lifetime record of 10-2-0 in 12 starts and career earnings of $688,117 for Pennsylvania's Burke Racing Stable LLC, Weaver Bruscemi LLC and New Jersey's Lawrence Karr and Phillip Collura.

"We’ve been high on this colt all year," said Weaver. "To say (1):49, no, but it’s pretty special. I’m usually a claiming guy ; $10,000, $20,000 claimers. I always said winning that was just as good as winning a stakes race, but after this I think I was wrong. This is pretty sweet. I wasn’t very nervous. I was just looking at the timer and hoping he could put a good mark on. I just wanted him to get to the wire. This is my first Breeders Crown. It’s as big as it gets."

Larry Karr, a corporate attorney, said "This is why you’re in harness racing. This is the pinnacle. We’ve had a lot of nice horses before, but never a colt like this. This is really our dream. I haven’t slept for about a week leading up to this race. I was thinking about it every night, even though I have no impact on the race. We love Yankee Cruiser as a sire. We looked at every single Yankee Cruiser in the sale. This was by far the best bred horse by Yankee Cruiser and Ron loved him physically. He’s more than fulfilled our expectations."

"We’ve been looking for a horse like this since we’ve been buying horses," said Phil Collura. "When we saw him in Harrisburg, Ron said he thought he was the best Yankee Cruiser colt that we’d seen and we were buying him. It’s a dream come true. This is my fifth year with Ron and Mickey. You can’t be with better people. It’s been great. I’m retired. I worked for 30 years for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority."

(WEG/Breeders Crown)

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[VVV] This is a great story & for so many reasons.
The passing of Brian Pinske back in late 2002 saw his father, Tim, take over the training of Yankee Cruiser and in one of those lump in the throat moments the colt won the 2003 North America Cup. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsCJv-uZL7s
Initially overlooked by the bigger farms, Yankee Cruiser then went to stud in Ohio.
Despite often ordinary mares combined with a not so lucrative Sires Stakes program and with that a general lack of staking of his stock into the bigger $$$ open events, the horse still got it done, regardless...ultimately siring his way out of Ohio to stand at Hanover, Pa.

True to form, with his 1st crop of Pa. breds, Yankee Cruiser again seized the opportunity & left Sweet Lou, a 2yo colts Breeders Crown winner by 7 & 1/2 lengths...in no less than a new 2yo colts World Record of 1:49.0...and on the same track that his sire overcame all back in 2003. http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/new...set-begin.html Down the page to Race 4.

Fairytales are made of this.