Page 18 - March 2009 The Game

18 The Game, March 2009
began helping in the barn as soon as he was able. After high school, “It was a coin ip between college and the horses, but I always knew it’d be horses.”
Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
MacRae is Centennial Farms’ new trainer
Saving Dave
The story of a beloved horse, and the family who brought him home
Amanda, age 20, is studying European business at the University of Guelph and works at Gardiner Farms in Caledon. Jenelle, 16, helps her parents on the farm and hopes to stay involved with horses on a smaller scale.
Ron and Janet treat their horses like their children and spare them no necessities. They invite them
into their hearts, and sometimes even their home. Literally. They once raised an at-risk thoroughbred foal in their house until he was well enough to rejoin the herd.
“The most we’ve ever foaled out here is four mares, but three is about all we can handle,” Ron Motz said. “So you hope you get lucky once in a while.”
By Harlan Abbey
One might think that a young horseman whose stable won at the rate of 24 percent and was in the money
58 percent of the time over several years wouldn’t be at Fort Erie for very long, he’d soon attract the attention of powerful owners, who’d begin sending him high class horses.
By Kelsey Riley
But it didn’t happen that way, admits Don MacRae, who midway through the 2008 season was named trainer for Centennial Farms Niagara and
win nearly $100,000 and was named Quarter Mile Horse of the Year at Fort Erie. A couple of years later he had Pembroke Hall and Storming
“Amanda wants to be in the [racing] industry,” Ron said. “Jenelle, she’s
MacRae’s rst good horse was Pico’s Star, which he claimed for $14,000 in 2001 and who went on to
The stretch run of the 2004 Sunny’s Halo Stakes at Woodbine had materialized into the type of rivalry race fans dream of. Two undefeated two-year-olds, one near-black, the other ery chestnut, charged down the stretch, a blaze of colour in the fading fall light as
they jockeyed for position. As the two competitors distanced themselves from the eld, the dark horse Out From Africa dug in desperately, calling on his last ounce of courage to defeat the physically imposing, white-faced chestnut racing alongside him. In the nal strides, Out From Africa succumbed to his chestnut competitor, Dave the Knave, who won the Sunny’s Halo by a neck.
showing a little more common sense.”
its graded stakes contenders.
On Merit, who were named Male and Female Quarter Mile Horse of the Year, respectively. Pembroke Hall went down to Calder Race
“I’m not shy,” said
MacRae. “I asked
Mario Formica (one of the Centennial partners), a friend for two years, ‘Give me a couple of your horses.’ He sent me Grain of Truth and in ve starts she had a win at Woodbine, two at Fort Erie, a second and two thirds. Then I asked to train all of their horses.”
Track in Florida the summer of 2004 and won the $50,000 Rocket Man Stakes on its “Summer of Speed Day” program, beating $3-million earner Caller One among others.
Centennial -- whose other partners are Brandon Boone, Domenic Di Lalla, Dr. George Zimakas and Karen Haloka -- horses include Sebastian’s Song, who ran in the Queen’s Plate and Prince of Wales, and stakes contenders Niagara Thunder and Tacito.
“That day was my biggest thrill in racing,” he recalled. “Everyone at Fort Erie was watching. It was a proud moment.” But he emphasized that “I haven’t trained any of my two-furlong horses any differently than my route runners. As long as they’re happy, they’ll run for you. I believe those old class horses appreciate the one-on-one time, the time spent grazing.
Jenelle Motz with Dave the Knave
The Motzes are solely responsible for their horses’ care, from foaling to sales
“They know how to play the game the right way,” said MacRae. “They know it takes money to buy good young horses. But we won’t be stabled at Woodbine. All the partners are from Niagara Falls and they want to come out to see their horses train in the morning. And as far as I’m concerned, Fort Erie has the best racing surface in Ontario.
“Pico’s Star remains my favorite. He’d just put a smile on your face every day and always aimed to please. Tracy gets attached to every one we’ve had at the farm. At the track, you can’t get stressed out if you lose a horse through the claim box. You’ll lose your mind. You have to focus on the horses you have now.”
Between luck and the dividends
of hard work, the Motz family has experienced success. Any horse person knows the probability of lightning striking twice, but the Motzes de ed the odds with Dave the Knave and his older half-brother, Forever Grand.
“Our stable at the Fort will be comprised only of Centennial horses. I’ll still train for long-time clients Daryl Jackson, Winston Penny and Danny Vella, but their horses will be stabled at the farm near Welland, run by my ance Tracy Hnacko. Right now, I’m still trying to nd out what my new horses like to do or don’t like to do.”
MacRae did keep track of Storming On Merit, who won ten races in 2003. She ended up as a broodmare in Kentucky and this fall Centennial purchased her yearling lly sired by City Zip: “Speed on speed -- I can’t wait to see her.”
In the midst of this small town serenity, the Motz family (Ron, Janet and daughters Amanda and Jenelle) celebrated the victory by Dave the Knave, the horse they had bred, raised, and vowed to bring home from the day they sold.
“You don’t get too many that come along that you say, ‘this is a nice horse, I’d like to have him back’,” Janet Motz said. “We’ve had two, and (Dave the Knave) is one of them.”
For Ron and Janet, breeding horses has been a family affair for more than 20 years. They have explored many facets of the horse industry, from showmanship to endurance riding,
and dabbled in Quarter Horses and Standardbreds before landing in the Thoroughbred breeding business in 1988.
The love they have for their equine family members is obvious. Each horse is de ned not by name and pedigree, but by stories and personal experiences gained from countless hours of intimate care. It is also a love they have passed on to their daughters.
In 1993, the Motzes purchased a robust chestnut mare called Braverelle. A former claimer with a tenacious character and a questionable pedigree, Braverelle entered the Motzes broodmare band with the odds stacked against her.
MacRae contends “I think I train differently from a lot of trainers, I’m not aggressive like some trainers who breeze a horse every seven days. My horses do a lot of jogging, and when they do breeze they go slower. I can’t say if it’s right or wrong, but if it works for you, it works.”
MacRae tries to nd good homes
for horses who can’t be competitive
in racing. But last year he gave away three horses and was shocked to
nd two of them on the Fort Erie backstretch this season: “I found out that writing ‘Not to be raced’ on a horse’s registration papers means nothing; you have to notify the Ontario Jockey Club to bar a retired horse from racing again. For our retirees, we try to nd little girls that love horses.”
“It was one of those lines where the pedigree page was dead,” Ron said. “She was the only one left on the page, but she did very well. You never know what a broodmare’s going to look like.”
The 32-year-old horseman plans to continue to use jockey Chris Grif th on all his Fort Erie starters but at Woodbine will give rst call to Tyler Pizarro, explaining: “At Fort Erie, Chris remains the best rider as well as my best friend, but at Woodbine there are 15 amazing riders.”
So with his new higher class runners it means that this winter MacRae won’t be driving to Mountaineer Park in West Virginia to race. Instead he’ll have ten or 12 Centennial horses in Florida all winter long: “It’ll be a great experience to train top horses and to see top horses trained by other horsemen. But we’re going to Florida to develop horses, not just to race for higher purses.”
In 1999, Braverelle produced a bay War Deputy colt that would later be named Forever Grand. Purchased by Bob Tiller and Frank DiGiulio Jr. for $50,000 at Ontario’s 2000 Canadian- bred yearling sale, Forever Grand won seven stakes over a ve year career, earning just over $1 million.
MacRae comes from a racing family; his late father Cameron owned Standardbreds until switching to Thoroughbreds in 1991. Don MacRae
By this time, Braverelle had developed a reputation for producing horses bold in character. As a foal, Forever Grand earned the nickname ‘Caw’ after the classic Jungle Book character for his snake-like attacks.
A few short hours north that same day, the scene was quite different. Far from the cheering fans and bustling crowds of Toronto’s Woodbine Racetrack is the village of Ayton, Ontario. Here, the land is marked not by city streets and high rise buildings, but by winding country roads anked by farm houses and bank barns. To get here, one must travel past towns like Redickville, and places like the Boonies Bar and Grill. You would have to walk more than a country mile to reach a Tim Hortons.
preparation. They keep a select number of horses on their hundred- acre property.
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