Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Odds On Racing's

Trainer of the Month
for April 2009

Jim Arledge, Jr.

Ohio native Jim Arledge, Jr., 51, is a trainer who has expanded his horizons well beyond the borders of the Buckeye State in recent years, and has been among the sport’s busiest and most successful conditioners.

Jim Arledge, Jr.

In 2008 his stable won $2.1 million, a career best, and among his top horses were Sweetheart winner Pedigree Snob, Pennsylvania Sire Stakes champion Braggart, and leading 3-year-old pacers Sand Shooter and Upfront Hannahsboy.

Just like the land he lives and works on, Arledge is quiet and understated, an individual who has plied his wares in the harness industry the past three decades. Arledge rarely receives a great deal of press and doesn’t seek out the limelight, preferring instead to concentrate on his horses and his family.

Born on June 6, 1957, this third generation horseman grew up learning the trade from his father Jim A. Arledge and grandfather William. (note—Arledge is not a junior since his middle name is Russell)

"I didn’t hang around the barn a lot as a kid, but I would go with Dad on the weekends," Arledge recalled. "I always played sports—football and basketball--in school and stayed busy that way."

Arledge graduated from Circleville High School in 1975, garnered several football scholarships and attended football camps, but "I didn’t really want to go to college, so I went to work at Coca-Cola instead," Arledge laughed. "I spent some time with my uncle Harlow and eventually went to work for Joe Adamsky."

Arledge began as a caretaker for the then-powerful Adamsky Stable—based at Scioto Downs—and eventually worked his way up to second trainer, a spot he held for eight years.

"My dad and Joe (Adamsky) had raced against each other and were friends, and Joe had a big stable back in the 1980s when I went to work for him," Arledge remembered. "Joe is a very positive guy. That positive attitude made him very successful and a great guy to work for and be around."

Arledge said the knowledge he gathered from Adamsky about rigging young horses, and his father’s advice on shoeing problem horses, has proved invaluable to his career.

"Joe was very good with young horses," Arledge offered. "We trained a lot of young horses at the time, and Joe was great at rigging them and bringing them along. Joe always kept you on the right foot and kept a positive attitude. When he drove, he always brought a horse back with something left. He never brutalized a horse they way some of the drivers do nowadays.

"Dad taught me a lot about shoeing—he’s very good about working on horses with hoof problems. To this day, anytime I have a problem with one of my trotters he always offers solid advice."

When it was time to branch out on his own, Arledge decided he wanted to stick near home, and purchased the ten-acre Orient farm that is home today.

"At the time I thought it was the right thing to settle in Ohio," Arledge noted. "My wife and I decided it was time to settle down and start a family. I started with about ten horses and got lucky with some sire stakes horses and before long, I had 20 horses in my barn. Over the years I’ve hooked up with some awful nice owners and things have just kind of blossomed from there."

"Ohio is a nice central location, with a lot of tracks that really aren’t that far away," Arledge said. "If the kids didn’t have school, it might be nice to be in some other venue, but this is alright for now."

Though he’s trained the winners of over half a million dollars nearly every season, it was 2006 2007, and 2008 that have proved most fruitful for Arledge.

"Last year was definitely my best season, thanks to horses like Mythical Lindy and Sand Shooter," Arledge explained. "We had a lot of nice horses come along who raced well and made money at the right time.

"Mythical Lindy--he was a natural from day one," Arledge continued. "He was a great trotter. He was very good gaited and could trot very fast at 2. He was nice to be around, pretty easy to handle but could be a little temperamental at times. There wasn’t a lot of work to be done on him in terms of vet work or shoeing—he just wore half rounds up front and swedges behind."

The son of SJ’s Caviar trotted to numerous Pennsylvania Sires Stakes victories at 2, amassing $298,263 in 2006. That season that saw him win seven of 11 starts with a record of 2, 1:57.1f, taken at Pocono Downs on Sept. 16. He captured his $25,000 Breeders Crown elim on Oct. 20, then finished fourth to Donato Hanover in the $600,000 final, wrapping up his freshman campaign.

Owned by the Ohio connections of Thomas York and Joe Sbrocco, Mythical Lindy would prove to be even more successful as a 3-year-old, earning $330,841 and lowering his record to 1:53.2 at Lexington with regular pilot David Miller at the lines.

"We got offered big money for Mythical Lindy and didn’t sell him," Arledge noted. "We’ve sold some horses here and there. When you’re offered good money for a horse it’s pretty hard to turn it down, but I don’t overly promote selling the horses I train. If someone comes along and is interested, that’s fine, but I don’t actively seek folks out looking to buy horses. It really depends what an owner wants to do."

"We bought Sand Shooter at Lexington for $40,000 from Brittany," Arledge revealed. "He was very big, handsome and (my owner) Bill Sanders was looking to buy a nice colt, and Sand Shooter fit the bill."

In 2007, the son of Western Hanover had a stellar freshman campaign, earning $329,645 for owners Bill Sanders of Stevenson, Alabama and Jerry Silva of Long Beach, New York. He nailed down a 5-3-2 record from 14 starts, taking a 1:51 record in the Bluegrass Stakes at Lexington on Oct. 5.

"This colt had been in 2:30 or 2:35 in April last year, in Alabama, and he was a little late maturing, but by the time we got to Lexington he got really good," Arledge added.

Sand Shooter also won his $25,000 Breeders Crown elim at The Big M on Nov. 16, and was beaten just a nose in the $650,000 final by Santana Blue Chip.

"After the Breeders Crown I turned he and Upfront Hannahsboy (another top Arledge 2-year-old) out at Peninsula Farm in Kentucky," Arledge said. "I got them both back in February and started training them down. Carter (Duer) does a great job with horses when they winter, and both of them came back filled out and with a lot of muscle on them."

Upfront Hannahsboy amassed a seasonal slate of 3-2-3 and $93,121 in earnings from 11 freshman starts, taking a record of 2, 1:53 at The Meadows. This season, the son of Dragon Again won an $88,760 division of the Cleveland Classic at Northfield after pacing in a career best of 1:49.2 in the North America Cup split at Mohawk.

Sand Shooter began 2008 by winning a $42,522 Pennsylvania Sires Stakes in 1:51.1 at The Meadows on May 9, before finishing fourth in the $101,000 Burlington on May 31. He followed that up with a third place finish in his North America Cup elim at Mohawk one week later, before finishing a disappointing sixth in the final.

"He hit his knee in the North America Cup elim and it put a little hole in the knee, nothing serious, but it was a concern," Arledge explained. "So in the final, we decided to race him off the pace and it just didn’t work out for him.

"We just took it easy with Sand Shooter after the North America Cup," he continued. "I didn’t want to put him on the half again and I wanted to let the knee heal. He’s trained real well since then, the knee looks good, and I think he’ll be back on track."

Besides top pupils such as Upfront Hannahsboy and Sand Shooter, Arledge currently has 80 horses in training—with most stabled at Scioto Downs, ten housed at the Meadows, with a handful of others at Canadian or East Coast locales.

Having a plethora of racehorses and stakes colts training and racing in multiple jurisdictions presents challenges, but it doesn’t seem to rattle the ever cool Arledge. His stable runs smoothly—Arledge assesses—due to having the key people in the right spots.

"The key to successful management is that I’ve got one guy—Mike Neal—who takes care of the scheduling, book work, computer work, eligibility and knowing when to enter the horses," Arledge said. "That’s a full time job. As well, I’ve got a lot of very good horsemen that I work with. Here at Scioto my second trainers are Jason Moore and Del S. Miller and in New Jersey I’ve got Greg Woods."

Arledge’s operation is also based on maintaining good relations with his competitors.

"We try and get along with everyone," he offered. "This is such a tough, competitive business. You get all nerved up when you race in the big races, and you really have to try to roll with everything. There’s been horses that I haven’t gotten along with—for whatever reason—and so I’ll send them over to other trainers, and vice versa. I might send one horse to Noel Daley and another to my dad.

"We also try to station our horses where they might be racing for a while—especially with the way fuel prices are right now," Arledge continued. "For instance, we recently sent one filly to Trond Smedshammer. We kind of get along with owners that way too."

One of Arledge’s long-time owners is Alabama-based Bill Sanders.

"Bill (Sanders) buys and owns the horses himself and he’ll train them down in Alabama and then send them to me when he thinks they’re read to start going fast miles," Arledge said. "I met Bill just by racing against him, when he had horses with Terry Holton. Sand Vic was one of the first horses we had together."

Sanders purchased Sand Vic as a weanling from Kentuckiana Farms, broke him and sent him to Arledge after the colt had trained in 2:30.

"He was a very nice colt from day one," Arledge recalled. "We sold half of him between his 2 and 3-year-old season. He was a very good looking horse—very handsome and intelligent, and as clean a gaited trotter as you’d ever want to sit behind. That horse impressed me the most when—after he made a break in his Hambletonian elim—he came back a week later and qualified at Scioto faster than they went in the Hambletonian that same day. We had found out he had a chip in his hind ankle and didn’t really want to shut him down, so we tried to keep him going. Well, sometimes it would get to bothering him and sometimes it didn’t. The Hambo elim was obviously one time it did. He ended up trotting in 1:54.1 in that Scioto qualifier."

Arledge cites Ed Mullinex, Frank Detorri and Bob Key—that have all been "wonderful owners for me."

"Right now every day is pretty hectic because we’ve got a ton of babies—fifty 2-year-olds to be exact," he said.

Despite the numbers, Arledge’s operation runs smoothly.

"We train in sets of three and four, starting the trainers out by 8:30, with Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday set as the days we train five to six sets of babies. We start the joggers out at 5:30, so that most of them are finished by 8:30 each morning. That way we can concentrate on the trainers.

"I’ve got more racehorses this year than in the past, just because the money is so good at the Meadows right now," Arledge noted. "Overall, though, ninety percent of my horses are 2 and 3-year-olds."

Though he sticks to a training schedule, Arledge said he’s not rigid when it comes to dropping the training times with his youngsters.

"I train the babies as I feel they need to come down," he revealed. "I’m the type of trainer who drops babies when they’re comfortable. A lot depends on the weather, how the track is that day, etc. I prefer to do whatever works best for the individual."

"I’ve got a lot of 2-year-olds that are looking good right now, but it’s still early," Arledge added. "With a lot of the babies you can’t really tell how they’re ultimately going to be until you throw them in a baby race. We’ve got so much speed bred into them now that you can’t tell how much heart and guts they have until after a few races."

When it comes to purchasing yearlings, Arledge’s main focus has been Ohio foals.

"I study pedigrees some, but I go to a lot of sales, and to all the Ohio farms, because of the sires stakes program. But 80 percent of my colts this year are out of state youngsters. I didn’t intend for this to happen, it just kind of evolved that way due to better breeding and more money in other states. For instance, I like the Pennsylvania program, and racing in New Jersey is okay too. But I don’t have any Canadian or New York breds this year—for some reason, it just worked out that way. It’s really too hard to go everywhere and do extremely well. I had one New York bred that I trained down and then sent to a New York-based trainer. That just makes more sense to me."

Arledge also receives a fair number of colts to train over the winter from trainers outside of Ohio.

"I get colts to train down in the winter because it’s cheaper to get one ready in Ohio," Arledge explained. "I had seven here from Canada this year for Bob Key. Usually, I get them down around 2:20 and then send them back north.

"Even though some of the racing is pretty stagnant here right now, Ohio is my home and I enjoy being located here. The Meadows and some of the other tracks are only a few hours away," he added. "Plus, there’s still a very healthy Sires Stakes and fair program in Ohio for the stakes colts. We still need places for people to race the cheaper horses, and so Scioto and Northfield and the other Ohio tracks offer then a place to get their horses raced."

Three horses Arledge developed from yearlings include the tough pacer Dave Panlone p,3, 1:49.2 ($691,516); the rugged trotter Mr Pine Chip 3, 1:52 ($635,875); and one of last season’s best sophomores, Hot Rod Mindale p,3,1:51f ($306,446).

"We bought Dave Panlone for $45,000," Arledge remembered. "He was a very nice individual. I had raced his mother (Perfect Gesture) and she was a very nice horse, and I’ve liked all of her offspring. He was a natural, but he had a mind of his own and would be kind of ornery at times. In my mind, his best performance was in his North America Cup elim in 2006. He was first up the whole last half of the mile and still won—in 1:51.1."

Mr Pine Chip was the homebred son by SJ’s Caviar, out of the Pine Chip mare Miss Pine Chip.

"He was a very nice colt early and trained down well. In his first few baby races he made a couple of breaks, but after we added the trotting hobbles, he just changed and away he went," noted Arledge.

Mr Pine Chip won five of 13 races at 2 earning $290,508 under Arledge’s watchful eye, winning the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes Final and was finishing second in the Breeders Crown to Chocolatier. He was sold for $300,000 before his 3-year-old campaign and turned over to trainer Trond Smedshammer, winning the $375,000 Stanley Dancer Memorial Final at the Meadowlands in a career best of 1:52.

Arledge also harnessed Hot Rod Mindale to earnings of nearly a quarter of a million dollars in 2007. The son of Real Artist scored victories in PASS tests, and finished second in both his Little Brown Jug elim (to Always A Virgin) and final (Tell All).

"Racing at the Jug is one of the highlights of the season," Arledge said. "But overall, we’ve lost a lot of the Grand Circuit look that we used to have years ago. Most of that is due to our current economics."

But what has Arledge more concerned than the ever-rising costs of operating a large stable, is the medication rules that vary from state to state.

"This is one of the biggest issues facing horsemen right now," he stressed. "The medication rules are not uniform. Every state is different. Certain things—such as Lasix—should be the same in every state. It’s so hard to keep up with all of the different rules when you’re racing in multiple jurisdictions."

Recruiting new owners is also indicative of the economic climate, Arledge acknowledges.

"I think the racinos have helped to get some people to the races who wouldn’t have been there otherwise, but a lot of those folks have the "get rich quick" mentality. Getting the right people back to the track is tough," he stated. "A lot of the people I deal with are those who have been in the business for years. Right now harness racing is a tough sell for the younger crowd. They’re not as likely to put $10,000 on an investment such as a racehorse that they have to be willing to lose. They’d rather take their $10,000 and try to make $50,000 in another type of investment.

"I think our sport really needs heroes," Arledge added. "When we were racing Pink Ribbons and donating a percentage of her winnings to breast cancer research, we had folks following her everywhere. People wanted to see her—to see what she was like and how she raced. That was all because of the tie-in with breast cancer. Causes like that help bring people around to harness racing."

Pink Ribbons p,4,1:54.3s ($236,525) was a homebred daughter of Mr Vic that Arledge campaigned from 2004 through 2007 for Perrysburg, Ohio owner Kevin Greenfield. The Ohio chapter of the U.S. Harness Writer’s Association recognized Arledge with an Achievement Award in 2006 and 2007 because of work in generating publicity for harness racing and breast cancer research through Pink Ribbon’s accomplishments.

"I had raced her dam, DJ Babe, who was one of the top mares in Ohio, and Pink Ribbons was her first foal," Arldege offered. "Pink Ribbons was a very big filly but very natural and never had any soundness issues. She was just so pleasant to be around, and people and kids could pet her and stand all around her, and she was a big ham—she loved all the attention. Kevin (Greenfield)’s wife and Mike White’s (Raceway Park general manager) wife both were breast cancer survivors, and really helped to generate a lot of excitement about her."

Arldege bred Pink Ribbons, racing her while she was in foal, and this spring she delivered an Andover Hall colt at Ohio’s Hickory Lane farm.

"Being in foal really didn’t affect the way she raced at all," Arledge noted. "For her, it was just business as usual."

Arledge said he hopes to keep racing horses for "many years to come. I can’t imagine doing anything else at this point in my life," he acknowledges. "I’ve been lucky to have been blessed with nice horses and owners, and a great support team. You can’t ask for much more than that."

Jim Arledge Jr.'s Career Training Statistics Through April 1, 2009
Year    Starts  Wins  2nds  3rds   Earnings    UTRS
2009      120         7     17      16      $127,876     0.181
2008      803     109     95      107     $2,157,044  0.246
2007      704      94      82      76      $1,907,543   0.234
2006      508      52      61      62      $1,430,471 0.210
2005      392      57      54      35      $947,842      0.252
2004      406      56      53      36      $465,501      0.240
2003      547      83      76      73      $917,736      0.273
2002      444      59      50      56      $487,301      0.237
2001      589     115     84      70      $833,517      0.314
2000      336      73      55      45      $747,820      0.353
1999      357      50      38      47      $552,867      0.243
1998      397      75      70      32      $694,359      0.314
1997      340      60      44      39      $505,281      0.287
1996      289      39      40      34      $456,112      0.251
1995      296      40      42      22      $300,937      0.239
1994      317      41      47      32      $236,139      0.245
1993      551      85      84      64      $658,320      0.278
1992      452      67      69      50      $376,407      0.270
1991      194      46      25      29      $442,581      0.359
Total    1,208                               $14,245,654