Chris Grove begins Maryland training title defense

BOWIE, Md. (Jan. 5) — For Chris Grove, the ascension through the ranks hasn’t come without its share of setbacks. The cyclical ups and downs of horse racing affect every trainer.

But as the calendar year starts anew, the 41-year-old Frederick native and lifelong resident finds himself in the unprecedented role of standing atop the heap looking down on all comers, a big bulls-eye cast on his back.

On Saturday, Grove opened the 2011 thoroughbred racing season at Laurel Park as the reigning statewide conditioning champion after winning the year-round Maryland training title for the first time in his career in 2010. A third-straight year of personal bests behind him, including 95 total wins and more than $2.1 million in purse earnings, Grove will set his sights for the upcoming year on maintaining that upward trend.

Last winter, he saddled winners in both of the coveted graded stakes races offered as the centerpieces to the Laurel Park winter meet, en route to winning the 15-week-long stand, which served as the first individual meet championship of his tenure. Grove followed that up with similar success by claiming victory at the summer meet, led by a career-best effort Aug. 14 when he took down four races on the card at Laurel Park and two more that same night at Charles Town.

But the year also saw struggles as periodic cold streaks surfaced, most notably a downturn in winner’s circle appearances during the fall meet, along with the prolonged absence of the barn’s two best performers, who were both laid up with year-ending injuries not long after Sweet Goodbye and Greenspring won their respective graded stakes outings in February.

However, Grove ended the year with productive closing kick in the final weeks and earned 57 total victories in 2011 at the major Maryland racetracks — Laurel Park and Pimlico — which was four better than Scott Lake, who had won the title the previous five years and just recently became only the sixth trainer in North America to reach 5,000 career wins.

“I’ve never really put a lot of emphasis on winning training titles and meet titles before,” Grove said. “I would always just focus on the individual races and let that other stuff fall where it may.

“It has to be acknowledged that Lake rerouted most of his horses to Pennsylvania later in the year and he just didn’t have the numbers running in Maryland. That being said, someone had to win it and I’m glad it was us. We were there to pick up the pieces and that feels good.”

Grove, the son of former jockey turned racing official Phil Grove, plans to maintain a significant presence in Maryland for the upcoming year, though he also harbors intentions of further expanding into neighboring states, including Pennsylvania, through the interests of new ownership clientele.

For years, he has stabled the majority of his nearly 60-horse barn at the Bowie Training Center not far from Laurel Park, and, at least for the coming year, will continue to call the facility home for day-to-day operations.

Of course, the long-term prospects for horse racing in Maryland remain precarious. Tracks statewide were on the brink of shutting down today, and the Bowie Training Center set to shutter its doors, after track ownership and horsemen had failed for weeks late last year to agree to terms on a racing schedule for 2011.

The tracks, who are losing millions each year in operating expenses, wanted to run fewer dates to limit their financial liabilities. Horsemen countered that anything less than a full schedule of 146 days of live racing, the same number run in 2010, would represent the death-knell of the industry and place its 15,000 associated jobs in jeopardy.

On Dec. 22, at a meeting called by Gov. Martin O’Malley, the parties brokered a deal that includes concessions by all. Under the plan, the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association will contribute $1.7 million to those track operations and the state will subsidize the plan with $3.5 million to $4 million of slot machine proceeds originally intended for capital improvements at the tracks. The agreement is meant to allow the Maryland Jockey Club, which owns Laurel Park and Pimlico, to break even on its operations, which historically lose millions of dollars annually. The deal assures 146 days of live racing in 2011, but offers no guarantees for the future.

“It was a lot of posturing for a huge Band-Aid,” Grove said. “We’ve got one year to fix this. We can’t go through this again. It isn’t fair to the horsemen. It isn’t fair to the public. It’s not fair to the racetrack owners, either. So it has to be fixed. What the fix is, I don’t know.”

So as all parties invested in negotiating a deal for a permanent fix for Maryland racing have been given, in the least, a temporary reprieve, horsemen, such as Grove, can go about addressing their immediate concern: Winning races.

Grove said Friday he has a few younger horses he is high on, while his stalwarts are on the cusp of coming back and augmenting his stable.

Sweet Goodbye, who won the Grade 2 Barbara Fritchie in a four-horse photo finish last winter, is nearing her return to the track after being sidelined for much of 2010 with a bone chip that required surgery. The 6-year-old daughter of 1996 Preakness winner Louis Quatorze has begun regularly scheduled workouts and is likely to debut later this month in the What A Summer Stakes, a race she won last January. Grove hopes to saddle her to the winner’s circle in defense of her Barbara Fritchie title.

On the other hand, Greenspring, who blistered the field in track record time in the Grade 2 General George on that same race card last February, remains on the farm in South Carolina and figures to return to Maryland later this year. Greenspring had a screw placed in his shin following an injury sustained during his victory in the General George. He briefly returned to the barn last summer before re-injuring himself after kicking his stall. He’s been undergoing treatments since and Grove hopes to welcome his return in the not too distant future.

“My dad always told me, ‘don’t get too high, don’t get too low,’” Grove said. “Stay even keel. Because if one or the other gets the best of you, you’re not going to have that longevity.”

The 49-day winter meet begins today at Laurel Park. The meet will feature 15 stakes races, including the Barbara Fritchie on Feb. 19 and the General George on Feb 21. The racing will take place four days a week, on a Wednesday through Saturday schedule, through March 26.