Page 20 - The Game October 2006

20 The Game, October 2006 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
Alberta Backstretch
Mourns the Loss of
a Friend and Icon
By Miriam Hopf
To this day I can still hear the shuf- fling sound of Albert LaBossiere drag- ging his Velcro-sneaker clad feet around the shedrow. This sound was the first indication that Albert was coming down the shed or around the corner. It was almost always followed by a line of an old 60s rock song belted out at random times during morning training.
The barn could always tell what mood Albert was in by how loud and how often these now almost unrecognizable tunes came from his vocal chords.
Everyone who knew Albert liked him. “He didn’t have an enemy in the world,” remembers trainer Rod Haynes. “He thought of everyone as his friend – which was just the way it was.”
Whether he knew them or not, and regardless of gender or age, Albert addressed everyone he encountered either “son” or “friend”.
“Albert was one of the highlights of being at Rod Haynes’ barn,” says Tyson Zacher, who worked closely with Albert on the track and at the Calmar breeding farm.
“The first thing that you would think of when you thought of the Haynes barn was that Albert would be there.”
Sadly, Albert LaBossiere left us on May 16 at the age of 58. A worker and racetracker to the end, Albert passed away doing the thing he loved best – leading a horse to the paddock for a race in Calgary.
“It’s like a piece of the barn is missing without him there,” Tyson admits sadly. Life in the barn is definitely not the same without Albert’s shuffling, his strange jokes, his singing, and his handicapping.
“He was always able to make you laugh,” remembers Tyson with a smile. “He had a way – you could be having a bad day and he would do something only the way Albert can and he would make you laugh just by being himself.”
Albert remained loyal to Rod Haynes’ racing stable for the entire twenty years that he worked at the track. He came to work everyday, rain or shine, healthy or sick, a trait that trainer Rod Haynes really appreciated.
“He wasn’t afraid of work,” remarks Rod. ”He never missed a day for sickness, except once when he got kicked in the face.”
Even then, his friends on the backstretch had to force him to go to the hospital, and Rod made him stay at the farm for a few days. Despite having bones broken in his face, Albert was adamant that he needed to get back to work.
In fact, over the years Albert always got up early in the morning to feed oats for a number of stables. At one point he was feeding up to 250 horses per morning.
CONTINUED PAGE 22 - SEE ALBERT
When senior racing steward Keith Smith retired September 5, British Columbia’s horseracing community lost one of its key players. Horsemen will miss Keith’s knowledge of racing and its rules. With straightforward common sense he has presided over the day to day operations of racing, enforcing its rules and regulations for the past twenty-one years.
Keith Smith was born in Red Deer, Alberta in a ranch house his grandfather built. His father was born in that house and a cousin still lives there, one hundred and two years later. That’s a lot of family history, a lot of stability and it reveals something about the man, about his character and need of constancy and adherence to principle.
At fifteen his family moved to Victoria, BC to look after his ailing grandfather. Having spent his formative years on a ranch it was natural for the fifteen-year-old to drift towards horses and soon he was working for respected Vancouver Island horseman Roy Jewell as a hot-walker. Under the influence of Jewell his career in the BC thoroughbred industry began its deep and lasting roots.
"Roy Jewell was an exceptional individual," says Keith. "He took the time to explain the short-comings and windfalls of racing. So those were imbedded in my mind from an early age".
Before long he was riding quarter horse races in Washington and Oregon. Newly married, he returned to British Columbia in 1971 to ride at Exhibition Park. His wife Sandy became his agent - the first licensed woman jockey’s agent in Canada.
The following year Keith took a job as manager for Ole Neilson’s Canmor Farms managing the breeding operation. He soon began training horses for Canmor’s racing operation and the first horse he saddled as a trainer was Decidedly D to win the Lansdowne Handicap.
But ranching was in his blood and in 1975 he became foreman for the Douglas Lake Cattle Company renewing a love of horses of a different kind; working, roping, horses, and he and Sandy began breeding performance horses. A venture that became a large part of their lives.
But again racing called and in 1986 he accepted a job as racing steward for the BC interior circuit...and found his niche in the thoroughbred world.
"Working on the interior circuit was rewarding," says Keith. "I met some very exceptional and unique people. The
characters certainly stood out; one trainer had a pet pig that used to accompany her to entries. But without those people interior racing would not have been the success that it was," he says.
In 1993, with the retirement of
long time steward Charlie Ulrich,
Keith was promoted to Exhibition Park. He became senior steward in 1995.
Keith’s strength as a steward was in his knowledge of the rules. When he made those tough decisions it was usually by the book, and he knew the book.
"That’s very important," he says. "The application of the rules has always been
Retired Hastings Steward, Keith Smith
important to me. And it’s important that they are applied equally for grooms and hotwalkers as for the owners, trainers and jockeys."
"The one accomplishment I’ve strived for is to be seen as an industry participant and not just a racing official. I hope I’ve accomplished that and I would be pleased if that’s the feeling the industry has about the 21 years I’ve spent as an official."
Never forgetting his roots on the back- stretch, Keith is appreciative of the people he calls the backbone of our sport.
"The support I’ve received from the riders and horsemen as well as my colleagues and staff, the support they’ve shown over the years," says Keith with a slight catch in his voice, "makes it an honour to have served the racing industry.
"Acceptance by the industry people is the most important thing of all. We know that when the inquiry sign goes up and we have to make decisions the best you’re going to do is 50-50. So you hope that the decisions you make are honorable decisions and defendable decisions—not only defendable by the board of stewards but by the industry. But part of the respon- sibility is to make decisions, some are dif- ficult but you are hired to make decisions,
so make one. Sometimes, the
next morning in the stewards office, when you review the tapes you get a little tense hoping that the one you made is defendable.
"It has been interesting to watch the changes in the sport over the last twenty years. When I started there wasn’t the technology; the video coverage there is now. There was no review, for instance. Watching that photo technology come through, the quality of the cameras and computerized technology, that really assisted us but also meant that we had to be very precise in our decisions because they were reviewable."
Keith’s premature departure from the thoroughbred world and the job he loved is due to health reasons. He suffers from a severe allergic reaction to environmental airborne pollutants; primarily exhaust and industry fumes. And the medication he’s been taking for the last three years has caused chronic fatigue. It took a long time to diagnose and became so bad that at one point last year he passed out in the steward’s office. Then quite by accident he visited the small town of Lillooet in the BC interior.
"Within three days I felt better than I had in years, says Keith. "And asking around I was told that people have been coming to Lillooet for years for respiratory and arthritic ailments. It has a unique climate and very clean air."
It was enough for Keith and Sandy. They sold their house in the smog filled Fraser Valley and bought a home in the clean, clear air of the Chilcotin country. Their new home sits on a few acres and they brought with them their favourite mare and a yearling colt they bred but there are no set plans for the future.
"I bought a new chair," says Keith. "And I’m going to sit in it and look at the mountains and do absolutely nothing for a while. Maybe I’ll think about what I’m going to do."
About his time as a racing official Keith has a closing comment. In a speech at an accreditation course a few years ago he told aspiring stewards that..." I really don’t know what a steward is and I’m still not so sure I like the buggers."
His dry sense of humour will also be missed.
A Look at Racing in British Columbia
By Jim Reynolds
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