To Honor Stephanie started off his career slowly, to say the least, with two last place finishes, but he's moved forward with every start since, reaching the winner's circle on December 22nd in his 6th career start. Coming off a good second place finish to the heavy favorite on December 2nd at Penn National in the 7th race, To Honor Stephanie was once again the second betting choice to a heavily favored runner. He broke well, but was outrun to the first turn and shuffled back to 4th in the early going. He moved between horses to take over 2nd down the backstretch, set sights on the early leader, drew alongside him in mid-stretch, but just couldn’t get by, losing by a head in a photo. Trainer Mark Salvaggio could see from his vantage point on the track that the reason Stephanie failed to pass the other horse was because the tiring leader was bearing out on him the entire length of the stretch, bumping him right before the wire, and immediately claimed foul. The Penn National stewards simply couldn’t ignore what they saw on the video replay and placed Stephanie first. He would clearly have won going away if he wasn’t impeded and the stewards fortunately did their job properly.

Kenwood Racing has been on a tear in December, with three wins, two seconds and a third from 7 starts for the month to date. Stephanie’s win gives us 4 two year old winners from our 9 two year old purchases in 2016. That’s 44% two year old winners, almost exactly 4 times the national average of 11.4% of two year olds who hit the winner’s circle at age two last year. In other words, if you bought 9 two year olds randomly, you should expect to have 1 winner (11%) and 5 or 6 not even make it to the races by the end of their two year old year. In 2016 six of our nine two year olds started (66% compared to the national average of 37.6% starters) and four won. Not to mention that the three who have yet to start are just a few weeks away from their debuts. Hard to fault our record with our two year old crop this year.