It's been a good year for trainer Chad Summers, who won his first Triple Crown race when Napoleon Solo (Liam's Map) won the Preakness by 1 1/4 lengths. It might get even better Saturday as Napoleon Solo is the 5-2 second choice in the morning line for the $1 million GI Haskell Stakes at Monmouth Park. To take a look back at how he navigated his way to the Preakness, what he expects in the Haskell and his thoughts on his controversial jockey Paco Lopez, Summers joined this week's TDN Writers' Room Podcast presented by Keeeneland. He was the Gainesway Guest of the Week.After Napoleon Solo had some ups and downs to his year, Summers said he has been on the right path for quite some time now.“You're looking for consistency,” he said. “When you're able to not miss training and you're able to just kind of come up with a plan and follow that plan, which in horse racing a lot of times is easier said than done. It's one of those things where you have to roll with the punches. Really since the Wood Memorial, he hasn't really had anything to kind of get in his way. It was a little hot a couple of days in New York a few weeks ago, so he skipped a breeze, but that was because we wanted to, not because the horse made us. That made us a lot more confident going into the Preakness and going into the Haskell as well.”It was not easy getting to or winning the Preakness. It had to be a gratifying experience for Summers.“It was kind of justification for what we've thought of him all along,” Summers said. “I mean, people wanted to kind of Twitter train us. It was backseat driving. We'll call it Twitter trainers. They wanted to Twitter train us when we skipped the Breeders' Cup and when things didn't go our way early on in the start of his three-year-old year. But we always were very confident with the horse that we had. We saw how brilliant he was as a two-year-old and then we saw it again as a as a three-year-old. Sometimes it takes a little while to get your feet underneath you and do everything the way that needs to be done.” After the Preakness, Napoleon Solo was sold by Al Gold to a group called Espoir USA Inc. Summers knew that there were no guarantees that he would be retained as the trainer.“It was tough,” he said. “We got the offer on Tuesday following the Preakness. I was at the Maryland Timonium sale. And when the offer came I presented it to to Mr. Gold and it was a very, very generous offer and one that we had to talk about and had many conversations about what to do. Obviously Mr. Gold loves his horses, loves the sport of horse racing, loves the Haskell. It was not an easy decision by any stretch of the imagination.“Once we made that decision to sell, I didn't know who the owners were. Most of you guys don't know who the owners are now. I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the opportunity to keep him or not. I understand that when you make an offer like they made there's no assumption at all that they're going keep the horse with somebody who's got 110 career victories. With the super trainers, some people win that many races in a month.”The “Fastest Horse of the Week” was Navajo Warrior (Candy Ride ({Arg}), who earned a 106 Beyer when winning the GIII Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Handicap. The Fastest Horse of the Week segment is sponsored by WinStar, which stands the sire Life is Good.Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the PHBA, 1/ST TV, the KTOB and West Point Thoroughbreds, Randy Moss, Bill Finley, and Zoe Cadman debated whether or not Paco Loez deserved a 30-day suspension for his ride in the Wild Applause Stakes. Cadman, a former rider, was particularly hard on Lopez. The team also discussed the formation of the Racing League, which will attempt to turn racing into a team concept when it runs 12 races next year. They also previewed this weekend's big races, highlighted by the Haskell.Click here to watch the podcast or click here to listen.The post Chad Summers Joins The TDN Writers’ Room Podcast Presented By Keeneland appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.