The Canadian Sportsman
June 11, 2010
For many golfers, there is nothing worse than an afternoon spent drudging around the course in soggy, saturated golf shoes while buffeting winds turn solid hits into struggles for par.
On June 9, the golfers taking part in Clinton Raceway’s seventh annual charity golf tournament overlooked such minor discomforts and turned out in droves to support a man who continues to face major challenges.
Since the fall of 2008, Gerry Gaynor (above, with wife Michelle) has been battling a brain tumour. The long-time horseman from Goderich, ON underwent surgery last November to remove the tumour and has faced many months of rehabilitation at Parkwood Hospital in London, ON.
Despite the rainy forecast, more than 130 golfers showed up for the event, held at Woodlands Links golf course in Clinton, ON, which also featured a dinner and silent auction.
By the late afternoon, the participants were treated to a better-late-than-never appearance by the warm sun and quickly dried out before dinner — when Gaynor and family, joined them.
All told, the tournament helped to raise more than $11,000 for the Gaynor family. The funds were raised not only through the golf portion of the day, but the silent auction, hole-in-one contests, hole sponsorships and dinner.
The tournament was just one of several big events for Clinton Raceway in 2010, the track’s 40th year. On June 20, the feature races will be the Central Huron Stakes Finals, while July 4 marks the day of the official 40th anniversary celebrations. The track features live racing action every Sunday afternoon (post time 1:30 p.m.) from now until Sept. 19, 2010.
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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.
April 30, 2010
Bad timing, that’s all. In another place, at another time, things could have been very different for Shanghai Phil.
It’s hard for trainer/owner Dustin Jones not to think about what could have been. The horse was a star at two, battling the likes of Rocknroll Hanover and Village Jolt. When he retired after a disappointing three-year-old year, the Quebec-based Jones thought he had province’s next great stallion — a pacer to hopefully, one day, mean as much to Quebec racing as Garland Lobell did on the trotting side.
His early crops were well-supported and highly-anticipated, but soon, they would have nothing to race for and nowhere to race. The Quebec racing industry was in free fall, bringing Shanghai Phil and his offspring down with it.
“We thought he could dominate in Quebec as a stud, because we always priced the horse for the little guy. We brought him into Quebec and our idea was to keep him low to encourage people to breed to him. We tried to do everything right and then all of a sudden the bottom falls out of everything,” said Jones, sadly.
“We put him here hoping that we’d have a horse, sort of like Garland Lobell was in Quebec on the trot, but he never had a chance. Half of his horses in the first crop weren’t even trained. The ones that did race, they just raced them a couple of times and then stopped with them because there were no Sires Stakes. The horse could never prove himself with no Sires Stakes for his first three crops,” he said.
By the time he landed at Ontario’s Kendal Hills for the 2009 breeding season, there had been no precedents set by his offspring and the memory of his 2004 glory days, including winning stakes such as the Champlain, International Stallion and Bluegrass, were beginning to fade.
Buoyed by reports coming from Kendal Hills that Phil had been tearing up the hills, full of energy, Jones took the horse home to Quebec to see if he could get him back to the track.
“He didn’t grow, but he’s thicker now in his rear and his neck. Of course, he’s eight now, instead of three. We just played it by ear. At three, he wasn’t himself, not like he was as a two-year-old. Now, he’s behaving like he did back then. All the same characteristics that he had as a two-year-old are coming out,” said Jones, who is currently training 28 at his farm, among them a three-year-old son of Shanghai Phil named Dirt Road Phil who recently broke his maiden at Flamboro.
To be sure that Shanghai Phil (Blissfull Hall—Matter Of Style) was up for it, Jones trained him in :58 and schooled him three times off the gate at Mohawk before he even qualified the horse.
“We didn’t want to put him in the races unless we were sure he was going to go a good race because people had bred to the horse and I didn’t think it would be fair to them if we put him back on the track and he didn’t perform well,” said Jones, who shares ownership with Hudson Standardbred Stb. Inc. — which owns a nice-looking Shanghai Phil filly named Petite Courageuse, trained by Dave Byron and racing at Georgian Downs, with a record of 3-2-1 from eight career starts.
Despite more than four-and-a-half years away from the track, Shanghai Phil didn’t take long to re-acclimate to his surroundings. He finished second by a head in his first start back on April 6 at Georgian Downs, then won his next two starts on April 13 and April 20 with times of 1:53.2 and 1:51.3, respectively, coming within one tick of his life’s mark.
This Saturday, May 1, he’ll take another step in his comeback by returning to action at Woodbine Racetrack, where he competed at the highest level in 2004, finishing third in both the million-dollar Metro Pace (Rocknroll Hanover) and Breeders Crown (Village Jolt).
“He’s jumping up (in class) this week, so it’s hard to say. He always did compete well at Woodbine,” said Jones.
“Right now, he’s having fun. The horse is very happy with himself, jumping in the stall and eating everything. It hasn’t been stressful for him. We’ll take it week by week and see what happens.”
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