Time for Trouble goes for his 3rd Claiming Crown win
If it’s time for the Claiming Crown, it’s Time for Trouble. Or so it seems.
The Claiming Crown will be staged at Churchill Downs for the third time in four years next Saturday. Entries will be taken Saturday, with the eight Claiming Crown races totaling $1.1 million, not counting the Kentucky-bred purse supplement ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 added to each race.
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The now 8-year-old Time for Trouble is one of only four two-time winning horses at the Claiming Crown, which was created in 1999 by the National Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association and the Thoroughbred Owners & Breeders Association. Time for Trouble won the Iron Horse in 2022, when Churchill hosted the event for the first time, and repeated in 2023 at Fair Grounds in New Orleans. He missed last year’s edition during a six-month hiatus from racing.
Trainer and co-owner Jeff Hiles says Time for Trouble, for whom he and Paul Parker’s Thorndale Stable prevailed in a 13-way shake to acquire the gelding for $8,000 on June 18, 2021, is as good as ever. This year, Time for Trouble has competed in stakes at Oaklawn, Keeneland, Pimlico and Saratoga. Most recently he was sixth of 12 in a Sept. 4 allowance race with an optional claiming price of $80,000 at Kentucky Downs. That day Time for Trouble rallied from 18 or more lengths back to lose by a total of 4 1/2 lengths.
“He’s a horse you don’t have to do a lot with to keep fit," Hiles said. “Not really a break between races, but we were kind of sitting on him, lightly training him until the last few works. Now we’ve set him down, and he’s doing really well. We lightly raced him this year just to keep him ready to go for this race. This has been our target all year.”
The Claiming Crown races are held under starter-allowance conditions, meaning the horse must have run for a certain claiming price or less in a designated time frame. For most of the races, it’s 2024-2025. However, the Iron Horse is for horses that have raced for $8,000 or less at any time in their career.
No horse has won three Claiming Crown events. The first to win two was Al’s Dearly Bred, who won the Emerald in 2001 and again five years later. Antrim County is the only horse to win two different Claiming Crown races, taking the 2008 Iron Horse and the 2009 Jewel. Royal Posse swept the Jewel in 2015-2016.
The past three racing seasons, Time for Trouble was more likely to run in a stakes, many of them graded, than in an allowance-optional claiming race or a starter allowance. The son of English Channel has been competitive on dirt and turf, fast tracks and in the slop, at distances from a mile to 1 3/8 miles. In his first start for Hiles and Thorndale Stable after the claim, Time for Trouble set Belterra’s turf-course record for 1 3/8 miles in 2:13.05.
Though he has run in a lot of marathon stakes, Time for Trouble is seven-for-13, with a second, at the Iron Horse’s 1 1/16-mile distance. That may have something to do with the class break he faced in many of those starts.
“I haven’t seen the eligible horses, but the class is not near what he’s been running against,” Hiles said.
If Time for Trouble runs well, Hiles would like to try him over Turfway Park’s synthetic surface this winter. And, of course, there’s the 2026 Claiming Crown that returns to Churchill.
“As long as he stays sound and wants to do his job,” Hiles said. “We’re not pushing on him. He’s 8 years old. He knows what he’s doing. It’s not like we’re asking him; he just does it on his own. He gallops out extremely strong, always ahead of everybody else. Even when he’s getting beat, the jockey has a hard time pulling him up.”
Talk about playing with house money: eight of Time for Trouble’s 11 career wins have been for his current connections, along with about $650,000 of his $695,710 in purses.
“He still has the competitiveness,” Hiles said.