story by Dave Briggs
photo by Dave Landry
Exactly 10 years to the day after his Little Brown Jug victory with Mr Feelgood, driver Mark MacDonald was holding court in the Jug Barn at the Delaware County Fairgrounds in Ohio talking about the horse that changed his life — which was another horse entirely.
“I’m going to roll the clock back one more year and say American Ideal,” MacDonald said of the son of Western Ideal out of Lifetime Success who set a 1:47.4 world record at The Red Mile in 2005 for trainer Casie Coleman and owners Brittany Farms and Mac Nichol. “He was my first real Grand Circuit ride, the first time I ever swung behind the gate for a million dollars, first time I ever got the big call in Lexington. He’s a special horse and that horse just turned into a great sire.”
MacDonald then launched into the story behind American Ideal’s 1:47.4 mile on Oct. 1, 2005 in the $140,800 Bluegrass.
“This is an absolutely great story, because this is vintage Ron Pierce right here… Ronnie’s got the rail with Village Jolt. Now, I think I’ve got the best so I’m leaving out and I don’t want to start (American Ideal) up because I know when you start this horse up (it was hard to slow him down)… And I’d never driven at Lexington before and everyone was telling me that you’ve got to watch that second quarter because it’s downhill and they’ll get away on you and I know how fast this horse is.
“So, we’re leaving out and I’m taking back and Ronnie’s going through with Village Jolt. He looks over and says, ‘Go ahead, Mark’. I take a look to my right and there’s no one out there so I’m just floating up to the lead. I’m floating halfway around the turn and Ronnie says ‘Go ahead.’ I’m, like, ‘I’m trying to go ahead.’ I look at the board and it flashes :25.4 and I was like, ‘Oh my God’ and just went white. Now, (American Ideal) likes pacing down the backstretch and I’m ‘Oh God, I’m going to the half in :51.’ I’m almost to the board and you can see it ticking, and I’m almost to it and it’s still in the 40s. He gets there in :52 and I thought, ‘It’s okay, I’ll get him settled down.’ Now he’s starting to relax and get a little breather in the third quarter and hopefully I can finish this off and not get fired. As soon as he started to relax, I hear in the two-hole ‘He-yaw, He-yaw, He-yaw’ and away (Village Jolt) went again. So, it was like ‘Screw it’ and I kicked the earplugs and decided I was all in.
“After, I said to Ronnie, ‘Dude, you killed me there’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, that horse of mine was really grabby.’ I suppose I deserve it, like, ‘the old greenhorn really got it there’, but I guaranteed he’d never get me again like that afterwards.”
MacDonald said American Ideal definitely led to his Jug victory a year later with Mr Feelgood and many others, including Sportswriter’s win in the $1.5 Pepsi North America Cup in 2010.
“American Ideal was the Brittany connection and then Myron (Bell) suggested I drive Mr Feelgood and we won the Burlington. We sat in the two-hole and beat Jeremes Jet. (American Ideal) was an Ontario-bed (Grinfromeartoear) and then was my ride for the year.”
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