As some of you have noted, a new video of Lentenor as a yearling is available on the Mill Ridge website. Also, a quick conversation with Peter Brette yielded some information on how Nicanor is adjusting to his new routine at Fair Hill. If any of you have particular questions for Peter - Related to Nicanor only, please - leave them here in the comments section and I will do my best to put together an informal Q&A for our next update.
As of this morning, here's what we know:
Nicanor is settling well into his routine at Fair Hill, although the past few days have been pretty rainy and have disrupted training as far as the dirt surface is concerned. For the past few days, Peter has taken Nicanor over the Tapeta surface rather than the dirt track, which has been a little sloppy.
"His daily routine right now is just galloping over a mile," Peter said. "He's just getting into his routine and went to the track this morning for a gallop as usual. Normally we'll jog the wrong way but when we're on the Tapeta it's much easier to take the younger horses the right way and just break straight into a gallop because it's a pretty narrow track. If the dirt is good we'll take him over the dirt, but we've been on Tapeta the past couple times because of the rain."
Peter is the one riding Nicanor, of course. He repeated the previous observations of the horsemen who have handled the Dynaformer colt before: he has a super personality, does everything right, and is a nice horse to be around.
"He's not too bad under saddle," Peter said. "He's pretty straightforward and well-balanced. We'll probably gallop another three weeks and end up galloping a mile and a quarter or mile and three-eighths before we move on to quicker work with him."
