Assiniboia Downs was back in racing action on Wednesday, September 11 after smoke from wildfires cancelled racing the day before.
And what a way for the racing to return, as veteran trainer CARL ANDERSON won his 1,200th race when SUGAR DADDY JACK was placed first through disqualification in the evening’s first race.
“That’s a lot of mornings at 4 a.m.,” said the 79-year-old Anderson. “It’s hard to do.”
Considered one the best trainers on the grounds, especially with horses going a route of ground, Anderson grew up near Sturgeon Road in Winnipeg, started to walk horses at the track when he was 13, and took out his first trainer’s license at the age of 19.
Anderson went on to win an amazing 10 trainer titles in Saskatchewan from 1987 to 1998, and tied for the top spot at the Downs in 2009 with Tom Gardipy, Jr. A horsemen’s horseman, Anderson won Canada’s top trainer award in 1989 with 62 wins, and way back in 1969, he won four races on a card for Max Freed’s Maxwell King Stable, but he’s probably best know by the veterans here as a four-time Gold Cup winner.
Anderson has won the toughest race for older horses at the Downs with Black is Beautiful (1982), Secret Cipher (1983), Deputy Country (2004), and Albarino (2005). He has also won the R.J. Speers Memorial three times, and trained numerous champions including Manitoba-breds Brinello and McKague. Brinello won the Agassiz Stakes four years in a row and became Anderson’s leading earner with $251,244 US.
Anderson retired briefly from training in 2015, but missed the horses too much and came back to the track in 2020. He’s won 14 races this year, and he’s not done yet.
Neither are leading trainer Lee Delaronde and leading rider Prayven Badrie. Badrie scored a hat trick on the week, and three-time champion Antonio Whitehall matched him, but Whitehall doesn’t look like he’ll be able to catch Badrie this year. Badrie leads all jockeys with 50 wins, 13 more than Damario Bynoe (37) and 14 more than Whitehall (36), with just five more live race days to go. Jockeys Rachaad Knights (26), Dario Dalrymple (17), and Renaldo Cumberbatch (24) also won a pair of races each on the week.
Cumberbatch won both his races for trainer Jamie Hartmann, who matched Lee Delaronde and Mike Nault, who won two apiece. Delaronde will not be caught in the trainer standings with 39 wins, 16 more than Mike Nault (23), followed by Jared Brown (20), Devon Gittens (20), Steve Keplin, Jr. (15), and Elton Dickey (15).
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