I agree. It's hard not to think he felt attached to him because of Beautiful Pleasure. And that's understandable. It doesn't change the obvious silliness of the comment at the time, however, and a better comment would have alluded to that. Regardless, however, who would have believed that Dr. Pleasure would still be eligible for a NW1X almost two and a half years after his very promising debut?

As a horseplayer, and race fan, it's most disappointing that Ward's horses seem to run very infrequently, and appear to fall victim to injuries far more often that others. Maybe he's had a bad selection....but the numbers sure don't look good.

If Ron Ellis had Dr. Pleasure, his long range goal would be a 2nd attempt at the Travers.

Anywhere u like.......:D

Maybe John's wife gets jealous of the good horses in the barn and clubs them.

Ward selects the horses at auctions :eek: :eek:

Which makes his stint as the "trainers voice" on the KHRA even more laughable. He was constantly pointed out as the "good" example in the KHRA vs. the KYHBPA battle over medication rules. I pointed out at one of the hearings that if we all raced our horses as much as Ward did there would only need to be one day of racing per month. Of course Mrs Whitfield in her typically delightful manner refused to acknowledge my comment. As a trainer who has stated that horses shouldnt be running on any medication, his actions or lackthereof as a trainer seem to make a good indication of what happens when they dont. He has a barn full of high dollar horses with the backing of an extremely wealthy owner, yet his horses rarely ever have any sort of campaign and are almost always at their peak within the first 2 or 3 races of their careers.