The Canadian Sportsman
November 18, 2010
It was 11 years and 85 races in the making, but a female harness driver has finally won an Ontario Sires Stakes Super Final event, the year-end championships for the best Ontario-bred horses.
Riina Rekila, a 29-year-old native of Finland who lives in Campbellville, won the $300,000 Super Final for three-year-old trotting fillies Saturday at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto when she drove Random Destiny to victory.
Rekila, who graduated from veterinary school in Finland before moving to Canada in 2007, also owns a piece of Random Destiny and acts as both her trainer and blacksmith, as well.
“I have been so busy that I don’t even know sometimes what day it is now,” Rekila said, laughing, shortly after being interviewed on live national television from the Woodbine winner’s circle.
Rekila’s historic driving win came exactly three weeks after Karen Hudon of Rockwood drove Magic Wheel to victory in London, Ont. in a $100,000 OSS Grassroots Championship event, the lower tier of the provincial program. Hudon’s husband, Joe, trains Magic Wheel and drove another of the couple’s fillies that night in London.
“Joe always teases me, ‘Oh, you don’t drive, you don’t drive. When are you going to drive?’ I said, ‘When I have one good enough to drive,’” Karen said with a grin, clutching both a trophy and flowers.
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November 08, 2010
There was a prep-school charm to Bob Anderson. He was a man of class, who lived life with particular zest and a perpetual schoolboy’s twinkle in his eyes.
He was larger than life.
Which is why I was deeply saddened to hear Bob died today in Florida after suffering a heart attack. He was 64.
I didn’t know Bob long or particularly well, but he was my closest harness racing neighbour. Anderson Farms is just a few minutes from my home in Port Stanley, closer to St. Thomas, where for the better part of the 20th century his family owned and operated Anderson Department Store, once an institution in the blue-collar town.
A few times a year I would bump into Bob in the tiny grocery store in Port Stanley where he has a cottage and often entertained old friends. It was those chance encounters, whether around town or at a racetrack, that were unexpected treats. Conversations with Bob were the kind you have with old friends — filled with warmth and good cheer and strong opinions.
His allegiances were strong — notable among them: to the Woodbine Entertainment Group where he was a long-serving director, the community of St. Thomas at large and to the exclusive Redtail Golf Course to which he was a member. The exquisite course is partly built on old Anderson Farms land.
Though Bob was a man of means, he also had simple tastes. “My best times playing golf, and I’m not a golfer, have been with my dad at Redtail,” Bob said in 2001. “The number of times that the two of us went over there and spent a couple of hours with an egg salad sandwich and a golf cart and played five, seven, 11, 15 holes, whatever we felt like, and never saw another golfer, you could not count.”
Above all, Bob’s passion for animals — particularly horses, of course — ran deep.
When, after more than 30 years in the thoroughbred business, Bob began buying standardbreds with his son, David, something magical happened beyond strengthening the bond between father and son. Bob even cherished the driving helmet he received as a Christmas present (above, Dave Landry photo)
“It’s really given my dad a second wind in the horse business, I think. I see sort of a rejuvenated soul,” David said in 2001 shortly after he and his father purchased their first standardbreds together.
David and Bob have had more good fortune than bad luck in a decade of standardbred ownership — highlighted by Hambletonian Oaks champion Southwind Allaire (t, 3, 1:53.4, $876,199), multiple stakes-winning world champion pacing filly Cabrini Hanover (p, 2, 1:51s, $1,473,729) and Pampered Princess (t, 3, 1:53, $1,740,605), who took on the boys in the Hambletonian, Canadian Trotting Classic and Kentucky Futurity the year Donato Hanover ruled.
All three millionaire mares were retired to Anderson Farms. I have frequently promised to take my three children to meet the talented trio. My daughters, especially, wanted to meet Pampered Princess, whom they initially gravitated to because of her name and fell in love with once they realized she was an equine symbol of female empowerment.
I always put off a trip to the farm. There would be time another day I told them.
How wrong I was.
October 28, 2010
Doug McNair has come a long way in just three short years as a professional harness driver.
Tuesday at Western Fair Raceway in London, the 20-year-old Guelph native won seven of the 12 races on the card. Officials aren’t sure if that’s a track record, but if not, it’s close for sure.
He currently sits second in Canada in wins in 2010 behind another young buck, 21-year-old Scott Zeron of Oakville. Zeron had 477 wins through Tuesday; McNair had 411.
Both sport lifetime earnings around $8 million already and both are closing in rapidly on their 1,000th career wins.
Both young drivers could even be in the running for Canada’s driver of the year award, though they face stiff competition from at least three veteran reinsmen.
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