The final stakes race of the 2023 Woodbine season is a competitive renewal of the $100,000 Steady Growth Stakes for Ontario-sired three-year-olds and upward at 1 1/16 miles on December 10. The race, first run in 1997 when champion Deputy Inxs won it, has lured the last two winners of the race.
ARTIE’S STORM, the 2021 winner and a graded stakes winner the past two years with career earnings of over $623,000 meets AVOMAN, the 2022 winner who his original owners recently claimed back for $32,000.
The field of 11 will go postward at 4:33 p.m., race 8 on the 10 race card. The Woodbine season ends next week with four racing dates through Dec. 17.
Artie’s Storm, bred by Sunrise Farm and owned and trained by Paul Buttigieg, has been a remarkable runner for that stables. The son of the late We Miss Artie won the Durham Cup (G3) on Oct. 7 over Algiers and Wolfie’s Dynaghost, the latter who came back to beat Artie in the Autumn Stakes (G2) last time. Emma-Jayne Wilson will ride the five-year-old gelding.
Avoman, a son of Old Forester who won the Plate Trial two years ago for D-Mac Racing and La Huetra, Inc. and was claimed in 2022, won last year’s Steady Growth at 13-to-1 for Paul Braverman and Timothy Pinch plus trainer John Charlambous. The five-year-old has not won in five races this year and he was claimed back by D-Mac, trainer Don MacRae, and La Huetra last time when he finished 11th.
Meanwhile MacRae’s other entrant in the Steady Growth is the red-hot big guy CRUDEN BAY, owned by Woodbine Entertainment board member Michael Lay. A son of Big Screen – Executive Affair by Bold Executive, Cruden Bay has won three of seven races this year, all in optional claiming races, and he just posted his best career Beyer Speed Figure, 89, in his latest win. Kazushi Kimura will ride Cruden Bay.
MacRae, who has posted $722,560 (U.S.) in earnings so far this season, the most since his 2010 campaign, recalled the moment that he first saw the bay, who was bred in Ontario by Dr. John Brown’s Spring Farm.
“He was an ugly duckling. My wife and I went to look at him a couple of times at the sale (2019 Canadian Premier Yearling Sale). He had what they call a ewe neck… there was no real muscle definition to his neck. When I spoke to Michael Lay, we knew this horse had a very good catalogue page. He’s a half to (multiple stakes winner) Cooler Mike and (stakes winner) Sav, so I told Michael, ‘If he grows into himself, he’s going to be a very good-looking horse, and he could be a very good one.’
“I have been taught by some very good horseman and they would say that you have to see what they might look like as they get older. We were envisioning that with him, and things have turned out as we hoped, probably even better than we imagined.”
Cruden Bay launched his career with a 7 ¼-length stunner in a six-furlong Tapeta race on November 11, 2020, in what was his only two-year-old start. After a trio of sixths in his three-year-old year, Cruden Bay went 1-5-1 from eight engagements in 2022.
“He loves the game,” said the conditioner, who will also send out multiple stakes-winning five-year-old Avoman in the Steady Growth. “Even as a two-year-old, he loved it. He loves what he does, and he still does to this day. He wants attention, he wants to be around people – he’ll poke his nose at you to get you to come over and pet him. He’s just a cool dude in every way.”
Lisa Knight has been the groom throughout Cruden Bay’s entire racing career.
“Her work has been vital in the success of this horse,” said MacRae. “He takes a lot of work. He is an athlete, and he does have his little bumps and bruises from time to time. I sincerely believe that if it wasn’t for the work Lisa has done with this horse, I don’t think he’d be half the horse he is.
“As much as trainers are the ones who get the attention, good and bad, it is important to take a moment to thank the people who put so much into these horses. What Lisa has done with this horse – words can’t describe it.”
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