He's Got the Power:
Out Within Power Named Sprinter of the Year

By- Chilcoat

They said he’s just a sprinter.  They said he’s just an ex-claimer.  They scoffed that he didn’t win a stakes race until he was five.  They said he’s not all that fashionably bred.  He’s Out Within Power, Sprinter of the Year, and he proved his naysayers wrong with a string of blindingly fast wins capped off with a Breeders Bowl victory in 2003.

When trainer Astros first encountered him, the colt was a three-year-old running for a tag in New York.  Both his record and his breeding were solid but unremarkable (he’s by Miswaki out of a Full Out mare), but something in the colt’s eyes spoke to the trainer.  The colt, having already run a staggering twenty-five races, looked sore.  But “there was something in his eye – a glint – that told me something more was there,” reminisces the trainer.  Astros dropped a claim and when the colt came home a winner he found himself with $35,000 less and one horse more.

Astros ran him back in an allowance, where he finished a respectable fourth, but Out Within Power still had maturing to do.  He won some and lost more, but didn’t show signs of being more than a nice allowance horse.  His four-year-old season showed more of the same, with two allowance wins in ten starts.  His patient trainer never lost faith, though, commenting that “He was always a hard worker and was competitive enough that I was never tempted to drop him back into claimers.”  That November, the colt ran a career best, posting a 115 speed figure in a stakes race, after which he took a couple of months off.  His five-year-old season was even better, with four wins and some eye-popping times.

Finally, in November of his five-year-old season, Out Within Power came into his own.  Running in a Louisiana stakes race, the horse surprised everyone by running six furlongs in 1:08.4, earning a decisive victory and a 123 speed figure.  He rested a few weeks and returned to the track a new horse.

Out Within Power stepped onto the North Carolina track for his six-year-old debut.  It was his first shot at a graded race, but that didn’t matter to him.  What mattered was that he was the best sprinter in the land and he knew it.  Exhibiting a cocky strut that was new to him, he loaded into the gate with his head held high and ears pricked.  When the gate opened, the horse surged forward with newfound enthusiasm and dominated a field of fourteen classy horses.  The race tired him, though, and he followed with a few solid but undistinguished races.

Then came the streak that won Out Within Power his Sprinter of the Year award.  He put together an impressive five stakes wins, four of them graded races, one of them the Breeder’s Bowl Sprint.  If not for two badly-run races on the grass, Out Within Power would’ve won five straight races.  It was an astonishing show of dominance and consistency at the highest level of the game.  He took on full fields each time, carried high weights, and ran against the best horseracing could throw at him and he came out the best every time.  Even so, he was a longshot at the Breeder’s Bowl, shocking everyone but himself and his trainer when he won handily at 14/1. 

Today, Out Within Power grazes calmly at the end of a lead shank.  Who knows how long he’ll be at the top of his game, but both of them are enjoying the ride.  “Yeah,” says the trainer with typical understatement, “he’s a real nice horse.”