The centennial running of the My Lady’s Manor race meet kicks off the historic Maryland timber racing schedule on Saturday, April 10, and the signature $30,000 My Lady’s Manor attracted a well-balanced field of nine for the three-mile race over post-and-rail fences in Monkton.
Champion trainer Jack Fisher, a former timber jockey, entered a formidable Arcadia Stable entry of Delta Park and Bubble Economy. Delta Park, a six-year-old Johannesburg gelding, opens his season of sanctioned National Steeplechase Association racing following an easy victory in a timber allowance race on the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup program in Unionville on November 1. Bubble Economy, an 11-year-old Rakeen gelding, won the 2008 International Gold Cup at The Plains, Va., and finished third last year.
Perennial leading timber-racing owner Irvin Naylor will be represented by Hot Springs, who won the My Lady’s Manor in ’08, and Askim, winner of that year’s Maryland Hunt Cup. Trained by Desmond Fogarty, Hot Springs posted third-place finishes in two timber stakes last year, the Genesee Valley Hunt Cup in New York and the Ski Roundtop Stakes in Maryland. Ann Stewart trains Askim, a New Zealand-bred veteran who finished second in last year’s Mason Houghland Memorial in Nashville, Tenn.
Also in the field is owner-trainer Sanna N. Hendriks’ South Monarch, who finished second in last year’s My Lady’s Manor.
The Maryland timber triumvirate comprises the My Lady’s Manor, the Grand National at Butler a week later, and the Maryland Hunt Cup at Glyndon on April 24.