Stallion Seasons Auction Open for Canadian Hall of Fame

The Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame has opened a stallion services auction, beginning Thursday and running until Wednesday, Jan. 18. All proceeds from the fundraiser will support the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame's ongoing mission to recognize the best in Canadian racing.

The second annual “Continuing Hall of Fame Legacies Auction” features not only Thoroughbred, but also Standardbred stallions, with stallions from both Canadian- and Kentucky-based farms. Among the major U.S. farms contributing seasons are Darley, Spendthrift, Lane's End, and Crestwood Farm.

For more information, please visit canadianhorseracinghalloffame.com/2023stallionauction/.

 

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Fipke Among 2022 Canadian Hall of Fame Inductees

Owner/breeder Charles E. Fipke, a Canadian geologist and diamond prospector who has made an impact on the sport on both sides of the border, will be inducted as part of the 2022 class in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. The other Thoroughbred inductees include jockey Eurico Rosa Da Silva, as well as horses Court Vision (Gulch) and Alydeed (Shadeed).

Fipke has been involved in Thoroughbreds for over 40 years. His Sovereign Award winners are all homebreds: Not Bourbon (Not Impossible {Ire}), Impossible Time (Not Impossible {Ire}), Perfect Soul (Ire) (Sadler's Wells), and Lady Speightspeare (Speightstown). He has also campaigned homebred Eclipse Award winner Forever Unbridled (Unbridled's Song) and a number of other Grade I winners. In 2020, Fipke was awarded the E.P. Taylor Award of Merit by the Stewards of the Jockey Club of Canada for his contributions to the Canadian Thoroughbred industry.

Da Silva, who has been honored with the Sovereign Award as Canada's Champion jockey seven times, moved to Canada after a successful riding career in Brazil. From 11,630 starts, Da Silva has 2,286 wins, earnings of $102,764,264, and has been partner to a number of top horses, including Canadian Horse of the Year and eight-time Sovereign winner Pink Lloyd (Old Forester).

Court Vision, winner of five Grade I races including the 2011 Breeders' Cup Mile, was bred in Kentucky by W. S. Farish and Kilroy Thoroughbred Partnership. Although his ownership and trainers changed a number of times, he won the final start of his career–the Breeders' Cup–for Spendthrift Farm and trainer Dale Romans.

Bred in Ontario by 2015 Canadian Hall of Fame inductee Anderson Farms, Alydeed was campaigned by David Willmot's Kinghaven Farms and trained by Roger Attfield. His biggest scores included the Queen's Plate and the GI Carter H. Alydeed was Canada's leading sire in 2001.

The Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame was founded in 1976 and landed on a permanent site at Woodbine in Toronto in 1997. Induction ceremonies for the Class of 2022 will be held during the summer of 2023, along with those inducted as part of the Class of 2023, which will be announced in April.

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Horse Racing Love Story: Hall Of Fame Jockey Celebrates Golden Anniversary At Woodbine

It's a horse racing love story going on 50 years.

When they sit down to lunch with their children, grandchildren and other family at the Woodbine Club this Saturday, Hall of Fame jockey Robin Platts and his wife, Deb, will take a moment to look beyond the racetrack, the toteboard and pristine Toronto oval infield, to gaze upon the expansive Toronto oval backstretch.

“I asked to Deb to marry me on the backstretch back in 1971,” recalled Robin, a four-time Queen's Plate-winning jockey who was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 1997. “I can still remember that moment. She said yes right away. And now here we are, 50 years later, celebrating our wedding anniversary at the place where it all started.”

They both know Woodbine well.

Born in Leicester, England, on April 27, 1949, Robin, who came to Canada when he was eight, chased his dream of a life in the irons riding his first winner, 42-1 shot Lily, at Greenwood Racetrack in Toronto's east end on November 18, 1966.

Deb Bruce, the daughter of Thoroughbred trainer Robert Bruce, was part of the local racing scene too, often helping her father at his barn while her mother Fredie worked as a messenger bettor in the grandstand.

Robin and Deb's relationship began courtesy of a question from Doug Anderson, a jockey valet who went by “Cricket.”

Was it love at first sight?

“I guess it was for her,” said Robin with a laugh. “I knew her dad way before I knew Deb. I knew her as Bobby Bruce's daughter… she was 13 when I first met her. I would say hello to her. One day at Greenwood, this was in 1971, I found out that Deb needed a ride home. Cricket asked me if I could give her a lift and I said, 'Sure, no problem at all.' We started going out that spring.”

Deb had her eye on Robin well before that car ride.

“I spent a lot of time on the backstretch when I was young. When I was a little older, I started going to the races more and I'd see the jockeys. There was just something about Robin that I liked, so I had a bit of a crush on him. I would say hi to him at the track whenever I saw him. When he took me home that day it just kind of went along from there.”

Their first date included another car ride, a romantic dinner and the gift of music.

“We went out on his birthday, April 27, and he brought me a couple of albums,” recalled Deb. “One of them was The 5th Dimension and the other, I think, was Creedence Clearwater Revival. Needless to say, he brought me a present. We continued on and one day he brought me to his house to meet his family. I remember I walked in and there was one black and white photo of Robin in Gardiner Farms' silks. He was standing on a set of stairs in the photo, without his helmet on, and I just loved it. I have it here with me now.”

By the time the two were engaged on September 13, 1971, Robin had already risen up the ranks of a Woodbine riding colony featuring some of the sport's biggest names, a list that included Sandy Hawley and the late Avelino Gomez.

Robin's career, one that included those four Queen's Plates – tying him with Hawley and Gomez as the most by a rider – yielded 3,245 wins, with his mounts nearly topping the $40-million mark. The recipient of the 1979 Sovereign Award as Canada's Outstanding Jockey, he won the coveted Avelino Gomez Memorial Award in 1992 for contributions to the sport in Canada.

His Plate triumphs came with Victoria Song in 1972, Amber Herod in 1974, Sound Reason in 1977 and Key to the Moon in 1984. Stakes stars included Overskate, Izvestia, Frost King, Norcliffe, Carotene, Runaway Groom and champions Charley Barley, Play The King, Grey Classic and Thunder Puddles.

In an eight-year span, from 1976 to 1983, Robin was the leading stakes-winning rider on seven occasions. He was the leading race winner at two Woodbine meets and five times led all jockeys at Greenwood during the track's spring meets.

But he was far from just a local standout.

Robin represented Canada in numerous international competitions, riding in South Africa, Bahrain, Japan, and across Europe.

Deb was always along for the ride.

“Everywhere I went, she went with me. I think that was a big thing for us. Being a rider is a very demanding life and to have Deb along with me, to get to enjoy those experiences together, was a really good thing for both of us.”

Deb and the couple's three boys were fixtures at Woodbine on weekends.

“When Robin couldn't be home on Saturday or Sunday to play with them or spend time with them, I told the boys, 'This is your father's job, so we can go there to watch him.' They got see him in action. I tried to go everyone weekend to support Robin and the kids would get to see them.”

Those remembrances, among countless others, will be talked about on Saturday at Woodbine when more than a dozen people, including their sons, Rob, Director of Broadcast with Woodbine, Kris, Manager of Broadcast Operations with the company, and Jeff, who worked at the racetrack for years, gather for the golden anniversary celebrations.

“Three kids, five grandchildren… it really is amazing,” offered Robin. “I quit riding when I was 50, galloped until I was 60 and hotwalked until I was 70. And here I am now, at 72, married for 50 years. It's been a great ride on and off the racetrack for me. I've had a pretty good life and I have a lot of great memories at Woodbine. It's a place where so many great things happened for me.”

It's a sentiment shared by Deb.

“To have our family with us, to be able to share this day with them, it's going to be really special,” she said with an unmistakable emotional tone. “We'll be back at the place where we met, where Robin asked me to marry him and where we all have an attachment to.”

The perfect setting for a half-century of racetrack romance that's still running strong.

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David ‘The General’ Gall, 79, Fifth All-Time Leading North American Rider, Passes

David A. Gall, the fifth all-time leading North American rider by wins and a member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Sports Hall of fame, died on Sunday at the age of 79.

Based for almost the entirety of his 43-year career at two southern Illinois tracks, defunct Cahokia Downs in Alorton  and Fairmount Park (now FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing) in Collinsville, Ill., Gall rode 7,396 winners from 41,775 career mounts, according to Equibase. Known as “The General,” Gall twice was leading rider in North America by wins – with 479 in 1979 and 376 in 1981 – and led the Fairmount Park standings on at least 14 occasions.

At the time of his retirement in September 1999, only three riders – National Museum of Racing Hall of Famers Bill Shoemaker, Laffit Pincay Jr., and Pat Day – had won more races. Gall was never given serious consideration for Hall of Fame status in the U.S. because of where he rode. He is the 1996 recipient of Canada's Avelino Gomez Award, three years after his induction into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

A native of Rose Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada, Gall began riding at age 15 in western Canada and ventured to Bay Meadows and Tanforan in Northern California. According to Bill Christine in the Los Angeles Times, Gall drove east in 1959 in an old jalopy given to him by a Northern California stablehand who owed him money, not sure where he'd end up. The car broke down in Arizona and he called his grandmother in Canada to tell her of his plight. She wired Gall enough money to buy a bus ticket to St. Louis, and that's where he wound up settling down, just across the Mississippi River in southern Illinois.

“He liked night racing, which is why I think he stayed there” said Mark Cooper, who was Gall's agent from the mid-1980s until his retirement. “He was one of a kind, had hands like you couldn't believe, and hardly ever hit a horse. You'd see him out there with his reins dangling and he won so many racing coming down the fence. He competed against guys like Shane Sellers and Mark Guidry when they were getting started. A lot of riders learned from him.”

Gall once won eight races on a 10-race card at Cahokia Downs and rode seven winners at least three different times.

Gall resisted the temptation to ride the bigger circuits where he might have gotten more press and had the opportunity to ride in major races. His only graded stakes victory, according to Equibase, came in the 1993 Fairmount Derby, then a Grade 3 event, aboard Adhocracy for Kentucky-based trainer Niall O'Callaghan.

“In my mid-30s, I realized I wasn't going to make it big,” he is quoted as saying in his Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame biography. “I never joined the rat race because I don't like rat races. I like horse races.”

Gall suffered a number of injuries during his career, but a 1997 spill at Hawthorne near Chicago was one of the worst, breaking six ribs, his back and jaw.

Following his retirement from riding, Gall trained at Fairmount Park for 13 years, winning 157 races from 1,523 starts. His last starter came in 2011.

Gall's wife, Mary, passed away about one year ago, Cooper said, and he is survived by a son and two daughters.

Funeral arrangements are not known at this time.

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