It may have been almost one year ago that the wonderful Ontario-bred filly Lexie Lou won the Queen’s Plate and Woodbine Oaks, two of Canada’s biggest races, in a span of three weeks, but Dr. Moira Gunn will not soon forget. Gunn and her late husband Dr. Mike Colterjohn bred the eventual Canadian Horse of the Year under their breeding operation known as Paradox Farm. It had been 20 years of hard work and pedigree analysis by Dr. Colterjohn that came up with the brilliant bay daughter of Sligo Bay (Ire) from the In Excess (SAf) mare Oneexcessivenite who was also named the Sovereign Award winning 3-year-old filly and Turf Female of the 2014 season.
Paradox was honoured with the Breeder of the Year Award at the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society’s annual awards evening held June 12 at the trackside tent at Woodbine Racetrack. The moment was poignant for Gunn since Dr. Colterjohn passed away in the spring of 2012 before Lexie Lou, a $5,500 auction yearling, had her first race.
“The success is really about Mike, though Mike is the first to say he’s only as good as his team,” she told Woodbine Entertainment following Lexie Lou’s Plate victory. “Certainly, Sherry MacLean, who was his farm manager, is one of the team. But I could name a dozen other people without which that place wouldn’t have been what it was. Mike had the most amazing staff that anyone could have asked for. He picked them and he trained them and he was loyal to them and they were loyal to him.”