Straight No Chaser is sidelined with bone-remodeling problem

Straight No Chaser has been sidelined for at least the summer with what trainer Dan Blacker called “the very, very early stages of some amount of bone remodeling.”

The 4-year-old son of Speighster, owned by MyRacehorse, is coming off a 7 1/2-length win in the Maryland Sprint on May 20, his second win in a row.

Blacker told Horse Racing Nation Tuesday that the condition was detected during a PET scan at Santa Anita and that Straight No Chaser was sent to Peacefield Farm for "a few months off."

Although it was “very mild,” Blacker said, “we felt like it was a good time to give him a break. He's had a really strong campaign since making his debut last summer, and we felt like this seems like a good time to give him a break. Obviously, it's disappointing. We had high hopes for him for the rest of the year,” including possibly the Bing Crosby and the Breeders Cup.

“But it was an easy decision to make.”

Blacker credited the capabilities at Santa Anita with detecting the condition. “Santa Anita has really become the forefront of technology and for diagnostics.”

In particular, he said, “I'm a big fan of the PET scan. It’s really been a game changer for us in terms of catching issues really early on in their development.”

Blacker is optimistic about Straight No Chaser’s future.

“He's going to come back bigger and stronger. He's only just started peaking, this horse. That's what's crazy. He's a late starter, after all, he didn't start until the middle of his 3-year-old year, and he has just been a little bit of a late bloomer. He's just really figuring things out. And obviously, you can see in his race record, he's started to really put things together and show his real talents in the afternoons.

“And I think a little time's only going to help him, and I think he's going to come back at the end of the year and into his 5-year-old year and be hopefully even better,” Blacker said. “So I'm excited for the future with him.”