Warrawee Vital got the injury during a training session

Veteran pacing stallion Warrawee Vital, absent from harness racing’s Free-For-All ranks and yet to make his first 2024 appearance, is on track to recover from an injury.

The Canadian record holder had been training down at Woodbine Mohawk Park, preparing for his seven-year-old campaign debut, when the setback occurred. Warrawee Vital’s co-owner Blair Corbeil explained to Trot Insider that the injury happened during a training session at Mohawk in mid-May.

“Rob [Fellows] was coming down the stretch with him when he noticed that he was off a little bit, so he pulled him up and his leg kind of swelled up,” Corbeil shared in an interview earlier this month. “I wouldn't say it’s a major injury, but it's significant enough that we're going to have to give him a few months off here.”

On a positive note, Corbeil noted that Warrawee Vital appears to be in peak physical form, resembling world-class bodybuilders.

“I hadn’t seen him in almost a year. I almost cried; the horse looks so good,” said Corbeil, who also serves as the Chair of the Board for Standardbred Canada. “He’s bigger, stronger than he was last year and just looked like a million dollars…He looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I haven’t seen a Standardbred look like that in my life.”

Warrawee Vital, a son of Captaintreacherous-Great Memories, has earnings of nearly $740,000 for Corbeil and co-owners Yolanda Fellows, M&S Racing Stable Inc., and trainer Kyle Fellows. The pacer boasts 23 career victories, including his dazzling lifetime mark of 1:46.4, set just over a year ago at Mohawk, tying Bulldog Hanover and Dr J Hanover for the fastest mile ever recorded on Canadian soil.

Corbeil expressed hope that his classy veteran will be able to return in time for some late-season stakes events.

“Hopefully he’s back to 100 per cent in time to catch a couple of these big ones at the end of the year. The good thing about these aged horses is the big money's at the end of the year, not the beginning.”