While trainer Roger Plante Jr. has driven Chesapeake Bay in all but one of the colt’s eight lifetime starts, he turns the lines over to Callahan, who said he has watched the son of Artiscape on the track. Callahan also previously had a chance to direct Chesapeake Bay’s half brother, Delmarvalous, to five wins and two seconds in eight starts in that colt’s $899,123-winning career.
“I’ve watched Roger drive him a couple times and it definitely seems he has a little bit of a go,” said Callahan, who starts from post two with Chesapeake Bay in Friday’s fourth race. “I know Roger has taken his time with him and I expect him to be competitive in the series. I drove his brother and he was an exceptionally fast horse.”
A $30,000 yearling purchase by Forrest Bartlett, who owned the 1986 Horse of the Year Forrest Skipper, Chesapeake Bay is out of the Scoot Herb mare Prymetyme Scootie, who earned just shy of $100,000 on the track. Her first foal was Delmarvalous, whose biggest win came in the 2010 Adios at The Meadows.
She also has a Riverboat King 4-year-old mare currently racing named Scootndowntheriver, who as a 2 year old scored a New York Sires Stakes (NYSS) win.
Chesapeake Bay opened his racing career in 2012 with a fourth and fifth in NYSS competition as well as a fifth in a Sheppard split.
He then broke his maiden in early August at Ocean Downs in a Maryland Standardbred Race Fund contest.
After a seventh in a NYSS race at Tioga, he was then turned out for the rest of the year.
Chesapeake Bay has two seconds in three starts in 2013, all at Dover Downs. The Junior Trendsetter was delayed one week due to a blizzard that canceled racing at the Big M last Friday night but Callahan isn’t concerned about the time off.
“No, it won’t hurt him as he’s had a few starts under his belt at Dover,” opined Callahan. “A lot of the horses who have shipped up from Dover to the Meadowlands have acclimated well and I think he’ll like the bigger track.”