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Below you will see the voting for the Canadian Athletes of the Year.  Sidney Crosbie was the runaway winner of the Lou Marsh Award and tennis player Alexandra Wozniak was chosen for the Bobbie Rosenfeld bling.  This is a horse racing blog, so when I ask, ‘Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?’ you should see where I’m going. Sidney Crosbie    72      15      2    248George St. Pierre 11      19      7      78Steve Nash           2        10      12    38John tavares         3        6       15    36Jason bay             0       11      12    34 Daniel Nestor        4        7       7      33Justin Morneau     3       8       5      30Alexander Bilodeau 2     5       4      20John Kucera           1      5       7      20Alexandre Despatie 2      4       2      16Patrick Chan           1      3       7      16  

No argument about Sid the Kid and mixed martial artist George St. Pierreapparently had a huge year (not that I’d recognize him on the subway). Steve Nash has had better seasons on the hardcourt and I admit that Tavares, Bay and Nestor all deserve votes. But why have both jockey Patrick Husbands  and harness driver Jody Jamieson been completely ignored?

 Husbands was the best rider in Canada this year. he won 188 races and unlike every person on the list of athletes who attracted votes, Husbands had no slump. He won at least one race every single week of the very long Woodbine meet that went from the first week of April to the second week of December. Husbands also won 20 Stakes races and his horses accumulated almost $11 million in purses.  In 1973, when he won 515 races to lead all jockeys in North America, Sandy Hawley was chosen as Canada’s best athlete. So why is it that when Jody Jamieson leads all drivers in the world with 796 wins (and whatever he adds in the afternoon card today at Woodbine) he doesn’t even get a sniff? A couple of weeks ago, Jamieson broke the Canadian record of 739 wins in a year. He’s had a remarkable year in a demanding sport, but apparently the sports editors across the country don’t recognize harness drivers as athletes. But come on…did Alexander Bilodeau and  John Kucera both do better in 2009 than Husbands and Jamieson? I had to google them, because as a mainstream sportscaster for  more than three decades, I barely knew who they are. Bilodeau is a free-style skier who earlier this year won four straight world cup events. Fair enough. Kucera is a skier who competed in 20 events this year with two wins. Jody Jamieson competed in 3322 races this year and won 796 of them.   As for the voting for the Female Athlete of the Year, you can see that jockey Chantal Sutherland came in 11^th.  Athlete                          1st       2nd      3rd       Tot
Aleksandra Wozniak      20      16        10        102 
Priscilla Lopes-Schliep   12       10        12         68 
Christine Nesbitt             15      8           6          67 
Hayley Wickenheiser      10      8          13         59 
Joannie Rochette              5      15         9          54 
Kristina Groves               11     8           4         53 
Jennifer Heil                    10     6            9          51 
Annamay Pierse                6     4            6          32 
Emilie Heymans                2     6            9          27 
Lauren Woolstencroft       2      7           3          23Chantal Sutherland           2      4            5          19  This is interesting because Sutherland won 159 races this year and in each case beat male jockeys. The 2009 Bobbie Rosenfeld Award winner, Alexandra Wozniak won….no tennis tournaments this year. Yes it was an excellent year for Wozniak, but she will probably do much better in 2010 and get nothing at year-end, because the voters will gravitate to the women who won medals at the winter games. If the awards are really for the ‘Athlete’ of the year, then Sutherland deserved to be ranked much higher. The physical skills required to ride race horses are many – get on a fractious two year-old colt if you really want to know. A professional jockey must be remarkably fit, have the most advanced muscular vascular system, incredible courage, reflex and intellect capable of making split second decisions that make the difference between victory or catastrophic injury.  Anna May Pierse is a swimmer who finished second at the World Aquatic Championships. Does that top the 12 Stakes races won by Sutherland?  This is really an indictment about how marginalized horse racing has become. The media guys at Woodbine, for example, send out hundreds of press releases each year, but for the most part, they are ignored by the newspaper editors, who comprise most of the voters for these awards.  Husbands and Jamieson deserved more recognition for their spectacular year. Chantal Sutherland continues to write an amazing story – she’s a professional female athlete, earning more each year than any other Canadian pro and doing so in the only sport where women compete daily on a level playing field against men. That she is – voting-wise - the 11^th best female athlete in the country does not compute.

Timing is everything in the world of sports. Harness driver Randy Waples hit the winners circle for the 5000th time, but because he did it sometime past 11:00 pm Saturday night, it received all the attention of a Scarborough High School  jr girls volleyball match. Waples steered Keystone Horatio to victory in the 10th race in the cold at Woodbine. It was a $50,000 pace and Keystone Horatio won easily at 2-1 in 1:50.3, an excellent time considering the -7 conditions.

Waples is what you could call a survivor. He’s only 44, but he’s been driving for 25 years and 2009 is one of his better years. He’s up to 277 wins, far off the 550 he piled up in 2001,  but purse-wise, Waples’ horses have accumulated over $7,000,000 and that will be the second highest total he’s put together.

Waples might be the most interesting man in a sulky in this country. He has taken a few mild stabs at acting and though that has never translated into a sitcom or co-starring role with Will Smith, the son of the legendary Ron Waples has a wicked sense of humour and an appealing presence on television. He may have a strong sense of himself, but Randy Waples is always the first to ream himself for a bad drive.

Sometimes Waples has been just a little too much fun at the track. Several years ago, after a winning drive, he would stand in the sulky like a Roman Chariot driver. The authorities told him to cool the grandstanding. Two years ago, while being interviewed on the The Score following a win, Waples pulled a Mike Myers and sent out a greeting to “my girlfriend, Alotta Fagina.”  That too did not resonant positively with the Woodbine suits and Waples had to serve a suspension. A paddock incident in which another driver suffered a helmet blow to the head led to Waples being banned from Woodbine for a period and his win totals in 2005 ( 197) and 2006 ( 131) reflected that.

As well, a dreadful spill three years ago caused Waples to break both of his arms.  There’s a great story here about his wife doing everything for him that he was unable to do for himself and we’ll leave the specific details to your fervent imaginations.

Suffice it to say that Randy Waples is fully functional these days. He has resolved his difficulties with the Woodbine Entertainment Group (and when pressed, the bosses easily admit that a guy like Waples is a most marketable commodity).  Anyone watching can see that Waples is focused on the job at hand - which is winning harness races. There is one terrific stat and it’s not easily explained, but Waples win a disproportionate number of races in the second half of the card. It’s uncanny how many times you see Waples on the winner in the 10th, 11th and 12th races on the Woodbine card, but it reminds me of how many goals Wayne Gretzky used to scored in the last ten minutes of a game, because by then, his opponents were gasping from chasing him all game.

Ok, so Randy Waples may not be the Wayne Gretzky of harness racing - more like the Will Ferrell. But he’s putting the finishing touches on a tremendously successful year and the guy is a riot in person.

Would it have been too much to ask that the papers print, say, one paragraph on Sunday or Monday about Randy Waples winning for the 5000th time. Why is it I have to be the only one to do this? 

I had multiple reasons for going to Woodbine this weekend. The 25th edition of Down The Stretch, Canada’s most informative and entertaining horse racing newspaper arrived at my door - all 5500 copies of it - Friday morning and that meant, for me, a day of distributing the paper at various locations. Our next issue will hit the bins on December 18, but we already know that Patrick Husbands will pull off the three-peat; he will be the leading rider at Woodbine for the third straight season. So the first piece of business for me on Saturday was to get 15 minutes of quality time with the personable native of Barbados.  That’s not always easy during the card at Woodbine because Husbands’ agent Gary Kemplen busts his client’s ass, booking him on as many mounts as possible day to day. That’s not too hard, because Husbands, simply put, is the more reliable and consistent jockey in Canada and the trainers pretty well crawl over each other for his services. Husbands stats this year are awesome. He’ll end up with close to 200 wins. He has more seconds and thirds than any other jockey. He will ride more horses than anybody else. He has the most wins in sprints, the most wins in distance races and the most wins on the turf. His 20 Stakes victories - yeah- most in the nation. He rides to win.

I did get fortunate though, because I noticed that Husbands was not riding in the 7th and 8th races of the 11 race card on Saturday and that would give me ample time to sit down with him.

Before meeting with Patrick, though, there was some minor unpleasantness in the jockeys room. Robert Landry, who is one of the more positive riders with regards to what we do in Down The Stretch, confronted me and hissed, “You screwed up!”. Landry does like to yank my chain, but he was a little pissed as he grabbed a copy of the paper and slapped the cover. Our very attractive cover in its eye-pleasing hue of pink declaring Year of the Ladies. he gestured at the pictures of Chantal Sutherland, Emma-Jayne Wilson, Saratoga champion trainer Linda Rice, Zenyatta, Rachel Alexandra, harness trainers Casie Coleman and Tracy Brainard.

“You left out Josie Carroll,” he accused and my heart sunk. Josie Carroll did deserve to be on the cover. If you’re going to do a theme about women in racing, you should include the leading female trainer. Landry has a special loyalty to Carroll, who trained the brilliant filly careless Jewel, whom Landry rode to several Stakes win this year, including an amazing win in the Alabama at Saratoga during the summer.  That Landry and Careless Jewel ran last as the favourite in the Ladies Classic at the Breeders’ Cup does not in anyway diminish Carroll’s work.  We would have been a little better if we’d put Josie on the cover.

That difficult moment passed and I interviewed Patrick Husbands and that should be a very readable feature in the next issue..

I left the jocks room and went back upstairs to the second floor where I ran into trainer Sid Attard, who seems to hold court just in front of the betting windows outside the Finish Line Bar. I needed two favours from Sid. I tried to persuade him to place a seasons’ greeting ad in our paper and I asked him for the phone number of owner Lou Tucci, for whom Attard trains horses. Sid was a little indefinite on the first request, but pulled out his cellphone and found Tucci’s number for me.

 Lou Tucci and his Tucci stable are the third leading owner this year. Down The Stretch is embarking on a project that may turn into a regular feature - the owner of the month and I elected to write about Tucci first.

Sunday was one of those days where many things converged. I called Mr. Tucci and he was pleased to meet me. He had a horse in each of the last two races, so asked me to meet him at 3:30 at the Finish Line Bar. That gave me time to solve a media pass problem. Woodbine issues accreditation to those of us who require access, but I’d lost my plastic pass, which, among other things, entitles me to discounted chicken and pizza at the food carousel. I presented myself to security and they gave me a form that I had to take to the media office for approval. As I returned to the second floor, I ran into Glenn Crouter, the VP of media for WEG. With him was the every smiling Sandy Hawley.   I thrust the security form into Glenn’s hands for his inkage. “Who are you?” he asked jokingly. Actually, Crouter informed me that he was taking up my quest. He had read the column in Down The Stretch, where I promoted jockey Chantal Sutherland as the rightful recipient of the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award of Canada’s Female Athlete of the Year. Crouter intends to push the issue with the mainstream newspaper sports editor. Suddenly, as I was shmoozing with Crouter and Hawley, a man came and introduced himself to me. It was Lou Tucci.

He gave me a terrific interview. He’s an articulate, positive guy who clearly gets a thrill racing horses. Tucci Stable is third in Canada this year with over $1 Million in purse earnings. Lou told me he had a horse in the 10th and a horse in the 11th. Needless to say, I pumped him for a tip.

“Artie Hot has a real shot in the 10th,” he said. “I really don’t know about Shananie’s Honour in the last race though.”

A couple things here. I’ve had a very poor year betting the horses. Two weeks ago, I decided to power down and not bet until the end of the year. After the Breeders’ Cup. generally speaking, there’s not much to gamble on anyway. So in spite of Tucci’s optimism, I decided I would just watch and abstain.

Too bad. Under a perfect ride from Emma-Jayne Wilson, Artie Hot sat off the pace and came on nicely in the stretch for a confident win at odds of more than 7-1. This was Tucci’s 22nd visit to the winners’ circle and I did manage to get a terrific shot of Lou, jockey Wilson and trainer Nick Gonzalez locked arm in arm in victors embrace.

I didn’t bet the last race either. Tucci’s horse, Shananie’s Honour was burdened with the 13 post and with apprentice jockey Miek Mehak went off at 40-1. Do you see where I’m going with this? Mehak waited until late in the stretch to make his move and got Shananie’s Honour up by half a length. The winner paid $83. I had nothing on it, but Tucci did.

“Once I saw Sid betting on it, I knew I had to,” he said referring to trainer Sid Attard.
I had $20 across.”

I can do the math. $20 across returned about $1200 to Tucci who had a very good day at the track, considering he won purses from the final two races. I had to be content with a very strong story line for my first owner of the month story.

And I am boasting to anyone who care that Down The Stretch, Canada’s most informative and entertaining horse racing newspaper has the most nominations for this year’s Sovereign Awards, the annual bling given out by the Jockey Club of Canada. Perry Lefko is up for best newspaper story and best feature story. Keith McCalmont and Eleanor Yeoman LeBlanc are also in the best  newspaper category and I have a shot for best photograph (yeah, I’m a professional photographer in much the same way that Chris Bosh rides thoroughbreds on his off-days). I snapped this image of Chantal Sutherland with the Canadian flag around her and she gave this perfect look. Thanks to the automatic focus on my camera, it wasn’t even fuzzy.

Strangely, I’m up against two pictures from Michael Burns and son Michael Jr. Thanks to the Burns, I have been able to print a steady stream of skilful and professional racing pictures that they provide me for free.