A Late Entry

[creativecause]

A Late Entry
Phantasm Frost and Alex Shade 

Alex sat proudly atop his mount in the early morning haze at The Wire. The track had been buzzing all morning about the upcoming races, and everyone was trying to get their horses into peak form with hopes of winning one of the Seaspray cup races. However, team Grayson Meadows’ opted not to run their entire stable in the races, with only two horses running in the series this year.

Phantasm Frost was the mount Alex was sitting on, stroking the bays neck and watching other horses run by. Rays of orange danced on their legs, heads, necks, back everything that could be outlined was glowing in a warm ray of orange. Alex was figuring Frost out pretty quickly, with two races together, neither a win, Alex was learning quickly on how to ride the colt. He responded better to hands and voice than a whip, you might as well not even have a whip when riding him because he won’t respond. Frost was a bit like a child, he would curl up in his own little ball and never come out when something went wrong or didn’t exactly go his way. With that in mind, Alex had started making some serious progress with the colt.

Frost was a late entry in the Bold Ruler Stakes, he wasn’t scheduled to run in it originally and wasn’t going to return to racing until July week 3. But Steve saw it as a great learning opportunity for him and he did need the experience. The race wasn’t going to be easy, as a matter of fact, it would be rather difficult with no front runners to push the race along. Daring Vision was a bit veritable so it was difficult to guess where he would run, either with Frost or behind Frost. The key to the 5.5 furlong race over the turf, would be to control and rate Frost. He was gonna be stuck on the lead and pushed or behind Daring Vision. If he ended up behind Daring Vision, he would need to be closer to him, the last thing Frost needed was to be five lengths behind. Frost may have been less experienced, but he had the better record, not to mention Frost had already beat Daring Vision once.

Alex clicked to Frost and the colt started trotting for him. Alex had already warmed him up, but the line for the gate was pretty long so he let the colt stand for awhile. So Alex warmed him up a little again and walked over to the gate and Frost loaded like a champ.

The gates burst open and in a frenzy, Frost’s hooves ate up the turf beneath him. Alex had to restrain the colt from going too fast too soon.

“Easy Frost, easy,” he cooed to the colt and he felt Frost relax his muscles beneath him. They fell into a comfortable rhythm.

Because Frost was a sprinter, and the race was shorter, this would be a quick work, and before Alex knew it they were rounding the final turn and heading into the home stretch.

“Come on boy!!” Alex called on Frost and he responded.

Alex kept pumping his arms and pushing Frost faster and faster, whistling and clicking his tongue to the colt to keep him encouraged. Frost’s hooves flew down the stretch, leaving turf and bits of dirt in his wake.

Looking at Frost and Alex, you might not have been able to tell that Frost was just a two year old. He was sprinting down the stretch like a professional, running in a straight line with his whole mind focused on the work. Switching leads like it was second nature to him.

They flew past the wire together, another solid work and Frost was ready to tackle the Bold Ruler Stakes and come home with the win.