Down the Stretch for January 31, 2022

People are now allowed to enter Ontario racetracks. Woodbine’s CEO Jim Lawson discusses that and the fact that even though he has never lined up at Saratoga’s Big Red Spring to get a cheap baseball cap, he’s open to the idea of enticing fans with giveaways. They ran the $3Million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream and let’s just say that Life is Good for jockey Irad Ortiz. It’s not so bad for Chantal Sutherland, who had another win in Florida and Daisuke Fukumoto broke through at Santa Anita. We have an animated chat with the former head of OHRIA, Hec Clouthier. Clouthier has some fond memories of ‘Bud’ Fritz and tells us a wild story of a government meeting in Berlin that turned into a police chaperoned trip to the racetrack where he drove the Mayor’s horse in a harness race. Carmen Auciello is the leading trainer at Mohawk, but he wonders why there aren’t more quality pacing mares in this province. If James MacDonald is going to repeat as Mohawk’s driving champ, he’s going to have to repel Louis-Philippe Roy and Doug McNair. And we have an astonishing story of a jockey named Debbie Waymouth. Wait until you hear how badly she was hurt in an accident. Wait until you hear how old she is.