By Wes Mayberry
Ask trainer Michael Hitchcock about Tempting Flames, and you’ll likely hear high praise.
“I’m very pleased with her,” he says. “She’s done everything anybody would want.”
That includes hitting the board in all seven starts thus far in her freshman campaign with five wins, two seconds, and $228,100 earned. And the competition hasn’t been easy. The Catch The Fire filly out of Hotshot Temptress made her debut purse start in the $150,000 Next Generation at Eldorado Scioto Downs and has raced in the Ohio State Fair Stake and all five legs of the Ohio Sires Stakes. But Hitchcock, of South Vienna, Ohio, saw shades of what the filly could become early on.
“Training her down, I thought she was going to be a pretty nice filly,” he says. “She’s very powerful. She has a very nice build to her — she’s built very strong. She’s very muscular and rugged.”
Bred by Ivy Holdings, of Apple Creek, Ohio, Tempting Flames was a $52,000 purchase by William Hartt, of Carmel, Maine, at the Ohio Selected Jug Sale in September 2025. As a member of Hitchcock’s stable, the filly pacer finished second and first in a pair of qualifiers leading up to the Next Generation race on July 4. She put her racing talents on display that night, tripping the wire in 1:52.3 in a photo finish with winner Real Classy.
Next came a runner-up finish to Party Up in the first leg of the OSS at Northfield Park, but, much to the delight of her connections, it’s been nothing but wins ever since.
“She’s very well behaved and doesn’t do anything wrong. She’s almost like an aged racehorse in the barn and in training,” Hitchcock says. “She gets a little high-strung in the paddock, but other than that, she seems pretty perfect.”
Tempting Flames followed a win in the second leg of the OSS at Scioto Downs in 1:51.3 with a one-length victory over Real Classy in 1:52 in the Ohio State Fair Stake at the same track. She was victorious in the third leg of the OSS at Northfield in 1:52.3, and then came the start that put her in the record books.
With Hall of Famer David Miller in the sulky for Tempting Flames’ fourth-leg race back at Scioto Downs, the filly stretched a two-length lead at the halfway mark into a victory by seven and a half lengths in 1:50 on Aug. 18. That performance not only broke the track record for 2-year-old filly pacers, it equaled the world record for a five-eighths mile track.
“To be honest, I was kind of not believing it because I didn’t think the fractions were right, but we’ll take it,” Hitchcock says.
Breadnbutterz led at the quarter pole in :28 that night, but Tempting Flames went in front going to the :54.2 half and passed the three-quarter mark in 1:22.1. While that performance was certainly impressive, Hitchcock liked what he saw in her next race — the fifth leg of the OSS at Scioto Downs on Aug. 29 — even better.
“To me, her last start was more impressive than the start she went in 50 just because we raced her out of a hole, and she was so manageable,” he says. “Dave (Miller) was very, very happy with her.”
That night, Thought I Had It, who went off as a 61-1 longshot, led the field past the first three calls in :26.3, :56.2, and 1:25 as Tempting Flames sat in fourth place between three and four lengths back. But the Hitchcock trainee used a late burst of speed to take command down the stretch and win by three and a half lengths in 1:52.1.
There’s no doubt that Tempting Flames is carrying plenty of positive momentum into the OSS Scarlet Championship on Sept. 12 at Scioto Downs. She finished the five legs with 230 points in the series, well ahead of second-place Party Up (188) with Cleveland Darby (160), Breadnbutterz (125), and Moni N The Safe (83) rounding out the top five in the standings. But Hitchcock isn’t making her the prohibitive favorite just yet.
“They’re all very good horses, so everybody has a chance,” he says. “We’ll just take it one week at a time and hope for a good post and see what happens.”
But to her competitors’ connections, Tempting Flames appears to be the one to beat.
“It doesn’t look like we’re going to beat that killer of Hitchcock’s right now — that might be the best filly in the country from what I’ve seen,” says Party Up trainer Joe Bongiorno. “I think that we might be second best.”
Photo Credit: Conrad Photo