Athene Noctura Stables’ Odi et Amo found everything to love and nothing to hate at the Kentucky Horse Park on Sunday, May 18, when he pulled away to a dominant victory in the featured $20,000 Jay Trump starter allowance hurdle at the 46th annual High Hope Steeplechase.
Trained by Allison Fulmer and ridden by Kieran Norris, Odi et Amo finished 8 1/2 lengths clear of Gil Johnston’s Syros. Bruce Smart Jr.’s Orchestra Leader finished third, 14 1/2 lengths farther back, and Bill Pape’s El Season was fourth in a field of seven.
Odi et Amo ran the Jay Trump’s 2 1/8 miles in 4:02.40 on firm ground at the race course north of Lexington. He laid off the early pace, made his move two fences from home, and won in hand.
The six-year-old Inamorato gelding takes his name from the first line of a work by the Roman poet Catullus and translates from the Latin as “I hate and I love.” The first-century B.C. writer was describing a tempestuous love affair.
Odi et Amo has had something of a tempestuous racing career. He made three unplaced starts in 2011, two of them on the flat, and he was pulled up in his only start last year at the Aiken Fall meet after missing the 2012 season. Fulmer had him ready for a2014 campaign, and Odi et Amo won his maiden victory over fences at the Stoneybrook Steeplechase in North Carolina on April 5. He ran a respectable second to Orchestra Leader in a Block House claiming hurdle on May 3.