Hardest Core, with Chester County connections, ready for Breeders' Cup Turf

The sun will come out from behind the trees soon, but a chill still hangs about in the shadows atop a hill in Chester County Sunday morning. A hillside over, some cows moo. Closer, geese take flight with great ha-honks, and a hawk drops from a tree and soars out of sight.

The horse is off in the distance and down the hill, invisible, but out there.

Hardest Core, upset winner of the Grade I Arlington Million in August, will have his final prerace training session for Saturday's $3 million Breeders' Cup Turf on this morning. He's fit, healthy, robust, but there's one more piece of work to be done.

Climbing a proper Pennsylvania hill - twice.

And here he comes. The muffled sound of hooves hitting turf arrives first, then the horse. He's an athlete and dives into the exercise, sucking in great breaths and pushing them back out again. On his back, Jody Petty perches motionless in the stirrups. He lets the horse do the work. Hardest Core rolls past, not quite at race speed but as fast as he can go by himself in a field with roughly 200 feet of elevation change in three-quarters of a mile.

Petty slows the 4-year-old to a canter, then a trot, then a walk as trainer Eddie Graham greets them. The two men talk it over and assess the effort. Then Hardest Core, eager, walks back down the hill to do it all over again. He'll take a slightly different path, but it's the same climb, the same strides, the same muscles. Afterward, he walks back to the barn through the woods.

Graham, 43, did not time the workout. He's not even sure of the distance, though the galloping area is part of a 170-acre field along Route 82 south of Coatesville owned by steeplechase rider turned show-horse trainer/rider Joy Slater.

"I don't know how far it is, and I don't care because I can tell how they work by the way they work," Graham said. "I've been doing this so long, from training horses here years ago, I just know."

It's all a long way from a racetrack, but a way of life in the horse country of Chester County. The latest in a line of thoroughbred stars to call the area home going back generations, Hardest Core seeks to add a chapter against the world's best Saturday at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif.

Owned by Andrew Bentley Stable, Hardest Core has had six workouts since the Aug. 16 Million - some on the hill and some on the track at Fair Hill Training Center a half-hour away in Maryland. Graham opted against a prep race, because of a hard schedule of three starts in seven weeks this summer. The result, he hopes, is a fresh horse ready for another race of his life. He'll need it, because the field includes European stars Flintshire and Telescope plus three-time Grade I winner Main Sequence in a field of 13.

"I'm trying to get him to peak for the race, and it seems like he is," Graham said. "I'm happy with him. A lot of times they walk home from that work and it seems like they ran a race."

Hardest Core was tired, but not overly so. Of course, after a year with Graham, the horse is used to it. And what a year.

Greg Bentley, CEO of the Exton-based Bentley Systems software company, spent $210,000 for Hardest Core at the Keeneland Sales last fall. Bentley has campaigned a small racing stable for years, mainly steeplechasers. He reached to six figures to buy this horse as a 30th birthday present for his son Andrew. Bentley's adviser, Rusty Carrier, and Graham wanted a horse with ability, the right body type, and the potential to improve. They got all three in the long-striding dark bay who had won three of eight starts for trainer Kiaran McLaughlin.

The plan was to give the horse a break, let him grow up a little, race him on the flat this year, and - long-term - see about a steeplechase career. Hardest Core was gelded, survived emergency intestinal surgery at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, and given a lengthy break. He made his first start for his new connections in late June at Parx Racing, a three-length win. Two weeks later at Delaware Park, he won the Cape Henlopen Stakes. Then came the big time, a start in the Arlington Million at Arlington Park near Chicago. At almost 12-1, Hardest Core took down European standouts Magician and Side Glance and four others for the biggest win in the careers of Graham and Parx-based jockey Eriluis Vaz - and one of the stories in thoroughbred racing this year.

Andrew Bentley, Greg and Caroline Bentley's son, has Down syndrome. He follows racing closely, and knows the importance of the Arlington Million - especially when he hefted the historic trophy in the winner's circle.

"Andrew knows and loves all the horses," said his father. "We're at the track, and he goes through the program and finds who's by Cryptoclearance [sire of early Bentley runner Clearance Code] and who's related to horses we've had. He knows it all. It means a lot to him."

A Breeders' Cup win would mean plenty to the whole Hardest Core team.

Graham, whose career purse earnings have more than doubled this year, is in the midst of his best season, with eight wins from just 13 starts. He's a small-time trainer getting a big-time opportunity. The Bishop Shanahan High graduate has paid two decades of dues, and would have been happy with some local success, then maybe a steeplechase career. Winning the Arlington Million would have been reserved for some fantasy.

"What's it mean to win a race like that?" he asked. "There are no words you can express, for me, that say what it meant. It's a dream. The only people who would understand it are the people who work hard every day and dream of winning a race like that. They get it, but they're the only ones."

Graham gets another chance at a dream race Saturday, and he's feeling the pressure a little bit. His horse flew to California Tuesday and Graham followed a day later with his wife, Wendi, and their boys, Mason (7) and Chase (5). As the man who worries about the horse, Eddie would have preferred showing up at Santa Anita Saturday morning. Everybody keeps telling him to enjoy it, to soak it all in, and he no doubt will - eventually.

"How am I supposed to enjoy it," he said with a smile while walking Hardest Core after Sunday's work. "I might not ever get back there again."

Then again, some climbs are meant to be repeated.