“Training horses — and I’ve said this many times — it’s putting a puzzle together. You try a lot of pieces and sometimes they don’t fit, but when they do fit, and you get it all worked out, it’s a beautiful picture.”
~trainer Mark Casse
Canada’s 13-time Sovereign Award-winning trainer MARK CASSE will finally have his induction ceremony into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame at Saratoga, NY on August 6.
Casse was inducted in 2020 but due to the Covid-19 pandemic the event was postponed. He will be formally inducted on Friday with the 2021 honourees including one of the world’s most successful trainers, Todd Pletcher.
Casse was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Indianapolis-born Casse took out his trainer’s license when he was 17 and won with his first starter. Joe’s Coming, at Keeneland in 1979.
He has gone on to win training titles at Woodbine 11 times, Turfway four times, Keeneland three times, and Churchill Downs twice. He has trained 18 horses that have earned $1 million or more. In 2019, Casse sent out the winners of two legs of the American Triple Crown: War of Will in the Preakness (G1) and Sir Winston in the Belmont Stakes (G1). He has won the Queen’s Plate twice for one of his longtime owners, Gary Barber.
Casse holds Woodbine close to his heart as he brought strings of horses to the Canadian track in the mid-1990s for Harry Mangurian, who had some 900 horses of all ages at his Mockingbird Farm in Florida. Casse soon made Woodbine his main base, praising the track’s training facilities and racing surfaces. In recent years, Casse has built up successful stables in other parts of North America. He oversees the training of his horses at his own Casse Training Centre in Ocala, Florida.
The Associated Press spoke to Casse upon his induction in 2020.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s very emotional for me. It just brings back a lot of memories, especially of my dad. I used to go to it with him all the time when I was like 10, 11, 12. I told him, ‘Some day, dad, I’m going to be in it.’ It’s just something that if you had told me in my training career to list five goals, it would have been one of them.”
And how fitting would it be if EASY TIME were to go out and win the Hall of Fame Stakes at Saratoga later on August 6? Easy Time won the Grade 3 Marine Stakes at Woodbine for Breeze Easy and is a contender in the turf stakes race on Friday.
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