He had that wry smile and handsome looks, and through the ’70s and ’80s had a movie-star aura about him in the world of Canadian horse racing. Heck, not just Canadian racing, as some of his most notable pupils took their saddle and bridle to the U.S. and won plenty of big races.
GIL ROWNTREE, a member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, Sovereign Award-winning trainer, and four-time Queen’s Plate winner, passed away Sunday evening, May 24, at the age of 92, according to his daughter Deb.
Girl was probably best known as the private trainer for Jack Stafford’s Stafford Farms, which presented the trainer with all kinds of young homebred horses that he molded into stakes stars. The most successful and famous of these was Overskate, a two-time Horse of the Year, nine-time Sovereign Award winner, and considered one of the greatest Canadian-breds of all time.
Born on the same day, January 17, as Benjamin Franklin, Betty White, Muhammad Ali and Michelle Obama, Gil began his horse career as a hotwalker and then jockey. His riding career was brief and he soon made his way up the ladder to train horses at Woodbine, signing on with Jack Staffird in the late 1960s.
He won three Plates for the Stafford Farms – Royal Chocolate (1973), Amber Herod (1974) and Sound Reason (1977) -and his supertsar Overskate almost won in 1978, coming up a neck short to Regal Embrace.
Royal Chocolate was notable too because Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were in attendance.
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