Pembroke Hall isn't well bred, he's a terrible bleeder, he doesn't have an ounce of stamina and, with the vast majority of his wins having come in claiming races, it's arguable how much class he has. Those are his shortcomings. He has just one asset-raw, unadulterated speed, the reason why he's the king of the 440-yard dash.

That was evident Saturday at Calder as the remarkable 7-year-old gelding ran his winning streak to 10 straight when winning the $50,000 Rocket Man Stakes, the two-furlong mad dash to the wire that is part of Calder's Summit of Speed Day. He did the same thing to some pretty good horses at Calder that he does race after race at his home base of Fort Erie-he ran like a tremendous machine, albeit a machine that hums for only 21 seconds or so.

"Going a quarter-mile, it's never a matter of my lacking confidence in him," said his trainer, Donald MacRae. "He's good at what he does. As long as he breaks, which he usually does, it's not a matter of class. If you're fast enough you're going to get the money."

There was a time when horses like Pembroke Hall wouldn't have been much use to anybody. A horse who could flash speed for only a few furlongs would be hard pressed to beat anyone at the traditional sprint distances like six furlongs. But Fort Erie gave new life to the stamina-challenged speedballs of the world when making two-furlong or 440-yard races a semi-regular part of the racing program in the late nineties.

There is one two-furlong race for males every three weeks and another one every three weeks for fillies and mares. They are all claiming races. Pembroke Hall, who has won at distances as far as six furlongs, but is 3-for-19 at distances other than two furlongs, was last beaten Oct. 6, 2002. Since then, they haven't been able to touch him. The last four wins have been for MacRae, who claimed Pembroke Hall for $21,000 July 29, 2003.

At Fort Erie, at his specialty distance, he's virtually unbeatable. But the Rocket Man Stakes was supposed to be another matter. The $50,000 purse attracted some fairly classy horses, including $3 million earner Caller One, who was making his first start after a two-year layoff. But Pembroke Hall, made the 2-1 favorite, got the lead halfway through the race and won by a head.

"Back home at Fort Erie, I am overconfident with him because he usually runs against slugs," MacRae said. "But down there at Calder it was a different scenario. Especially after we drew the rail, I was terrified. This was the first time he was challenged in a long time."

MacRae would like to try Pembroke Hall at longer distances, where he could consistently run for higher purses than the $16,300 in Canadian money that is up for grabs in the Fort Erie two-furlong races. His concern is that the gelding's bleeding problems would do him in; he says that in a two-furlong race there's less of a chance that he will be impacted by the problem.

"He's as sound as a dollar; that's never an issue," MacRae said. "He is probably the worst bleeder I have ever seen. It's just horrible to hold him from bleeding every start. I do everything under the sun with him. We start five days out. He's on a breathing machine to clean up all the mucous, so he doesn't get sick. It's an every day affair. You can't miss anything and you have to keep him on so much medication. At five-eighths or three-quarters of a mile, it's a matter of him bleeding. I'd love to run him at 4 ½ furlongs at Charles Town, but I'm just so terrified of him bleeding. That's why we limit him to the quarter-mile dash. I know he can run five-eights, as long as he doesn't bleed. But I don't know if we can stop him from bleeding if we were to run him that far."

But MacRae will consider trying a 4 ½-furlong race later this year at Charles Town, where he could run for a purse in the $30,000 range. Plus, he's running out of opportunities this year at Fort Erie, the only track in North America that regularly cards two-furlong races. Fort Erie closes Sept. 6. But he's got more to worry about than the bleeding problem. It's not out of the question that Pembroke Hall, if carefully managed, could near the record for modern winning streaks, which is 16 in a row.

"The winning streak is not something you want to think about all the time, but it is something that is in the back of my mind," MacRae said.

Perhaps the only horse on the grounds of Fort Erie who could beat Pembroke Hall at two furlongs is his stablemate, Storming On Merit. Also owned by Jackson and trained by MacRae, she dominates the filly division of the two-furlong claimers, having won nine straight and 13 of her last 14. But with separate two-furlong races carded for each sex, there's no reason for MacRae to pit the two together. Like Pembroke Hall, she doesn't have much going for except for her blazing early speed. In the unique world of two-furlong racing, it's all you need.