The Canadian Sportsman
Archive for May, 2010
May 27, 2010
The latest installment from my weekly Guelph Mercury column…
Harness racing’s mega-rich summer stakes schedule kicks off this weekend with a local colt carrying the hopes of nine first-time horse owners.
Grin For Money, a three-year-old pacing colt trained by John Kopas of Milton, has drawn the three-hole for Saturday’s $472,500 Upper Canada Cup at Georgian Downs near Barrie, Ont.
The colt is owned by the Grin For Money Stable, which was cobbled together by the Standardbred Breeders of Ontario Association. Since 2005, the SBOA has introduced 72 first-time standardbred owners to the sport through its New Owners program.
Click on the words “Guelph Mercury” to read the article in its entirety.
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“Sit up straight!!” How many times have you heard that one in your life? Most likely it was long ago, from a parent, or a teacher. But recently? And from a gambler?
Well, here I am, saying it. And I’m saying it to all our leading drivers out there, people whose talent I truly admire and envy. And I say it knowing I am most likely wasting my breath. But all this new-style leaning-straight-back aerodynamics is seriously, insidiously, damaging the racing product. There’s always been a serious front-end bias over half-mile racetracks, but over the last decade, it seems, even on the larger ovals, horses go to the front and last till the wire far more than they ever did during our sport’s glory days. Any chance that some of this is due to the new-school posture of our current group of leading reinsmen?
When I started betting on the races, in the days when the wooden Jerald sulky was state-of-the-art, the driver sat above the wheels of the bike, his handholds at most a couple or three feet behind the stitched-together portion of the lines. (Leather lines only in those days, kids.) As a race unfolded, and the horses dropped into place nose-to-helmet, picture the amount of ground a horse would have to make up during the course of the mile to reach the finish line first.
And then picture it now. To begin with, each driver now sits behind the wheels of his race bike. His handholds might be anywhere from four to five feet to even further away from the stitching. Imagine the red-hot George Brennan (above) on the front end as a field of horses hits the quarter at the Big M. Although I suspect I may be conservative in my estimation, between current sulky design and his preferred posture, let’s say his helmet is three feet further back then Buddy Gilmour’s was back in the day. Now, in the two-hole, picture the aggressive Yannick Gingras, trying to relax his mount, a bit charged up from leaving hard, following tightly along. Now, my math skills are awfully rusty, which I prove every time I try to help my daughter with her homework, but I can still do simple addition, and three plus three equals six, which is how many feet Yannick’s helmet is behind where the guy sitting in the two-hole in the 1980’s was.
And I can still do simple multiplication, and eight times three equals 24. Which is how many feet further back the poor fella who got away eighth is than his counterpart from the old days was. So now, in order to come from eighth place, a horse has to make up an additional 24 FEET to win the race! Twenty-four feet in a sport where I’m pretty sure the average winning margin is less than a quarter of that.
When I was a teenager, falling in love with the sport from the other side of the fence, as a field of horses turned for home at the Meadowlands, every one of them still had a chance to win. Sadly, that is rarely the case anymore. The same is true at Mohawk, and drastically more so at Woodbine. We are our own worst enemies, as we so often are. In an effort to go faster and faster, we make the actual racing far worse. One bright spot is Hoosier Park, where the management and stewards are to be commended for their strict rules about how far back the drivers are allowed to recline. So it is possible to change. Which makes our sport’s continued march toward the edge of the cliff all the more frustrating.
May 26, 2010
It’s not uncommon to run into someone with 15 years of experience in the horse racing business. In fact, time served in the industry is often counted in decades rather than years.
But when you’ve got 15 years under your belt and have yet to turn 18 — it’s safe to say that you are ahead of the curve.
As a three-year-old, Brianna Eckenstein graced the pages of The Canadian Sportsman back in October of 1995. The precocious little girl with the golden curls was shown in action in the barn, grooming her family’s pacer and new best friend Canvasback Sly (photo).
At the time she amazed her father Brian, a trainer, and her mother Debbie with her steadfast devotion to the horse and her enthusiasm for just about every job in the barn.
Not much has changed.
Brianna is still a mainstay in the barn at her parent’s farm in Denfield, ON and paddocks horses four nights a week at the races. She now owns two horses, El Miss Aces and Ingot Of Desire, outright and a quarter of three more and, next month, she intends to finally get that trainer’s license that she’s been prepping for over the last 15 years.
Just about the only thing that’s changed is that she no longer zig-zags between the horse’s legs like she did as a toddler with Canvasback Sly.
“He was my favourite horse,” said Brianna, who turns 18 in August, with emphasis. “I could go through his legs, walk around with hobbles — whatever. I could do anything with him. I remember that.”
Of late, she’s been making some new memories with three-year-old pacing filly El Miss Aces, who posted a 3-1-0 record from eight starts and earned $21,620 last season while racing across Ontario at Woodstock, Western Fair, Flamboro, Grand River and Woodbine.
“I paddock them all the time. I don’t think I’ve missed seeing one of them race yet,” she said of her horses.
“I definitely watch them, cheer them on and hopefully that helps get them going. I look like a freak, but I like to think that my horses can hear me,” she said, with a laugh.
She was sure screaming on Oct. 14, when El Miss Aces won a $24,000 Grassroots division of the Ontario Sires Stakes at Flamboro Downs with Dave Wall in the bike. It was a colourful win, thanks to both the peppy 1:58.4 mile and the filly’s hot pink harness.
The harness — one of two full sets of pink gear that Brianna liberally applies to her horses — generally prompts a few backstretch old-timers to tease the young woman they’ve watched grow up. They tell her it hurts their eyes. Without missing a beat, she offers a simple solution, ‘If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.’
She should just tell them to get used to it, because she plans on being around for a long time and the pink is here to stay.
“I want to be a trainer. I hope, for some period of time, to work for someone in Toronto just to get out there for experience. Then, I’d like to get back to my own horses and be a trainer.”
Finding someone to work for in Toronto shouldn’t be a problem. Having worked with horses since she was in diapers, Brianna Eckenstein’s resume speaks for itself.
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