Some 15 minutes north of Lindsay you’ll find Dunsford -- a town with a population of no more than 2,000.
You’ll also find a sprawling 150-acre farm, home to a small-scale horseman who is now enjoying fame and fortune, thanks to a star racehorse that nobody wanted. Rodney Hughes, 36, is a fourth-generation horseman whose great grandfather, Barney, trained 1940 Canadian Pacing Derby winner Bob Lee, and Hughes himself has now gained some celebrity status on account of his success conditioning the five-year-old gelding San Pail.
On July 25 at Mohawk Racetrack, San Pail posted a stunning upset by winning the $720,500 Maple Leaf Trot for older male trotters, turning back a field that included Lucky Jim, a horse who had not lost in 15 starts on the season. It was a popular (and emotional) victory, in part because San Pail has an impressive fan following, many of them friends and family members of his trainer.
In 2006, Hughes accepted a deal with breeder Glenn Van Camp to acquire a 75 percent interest in San Pail -- at the time, a two-year-old -- in exchange for covering all the training costs. It has proven to be a fortuitous deal. Now, having banked nearly $1 million, the gelding has helped Hughes pay for the farm where he trains.
Hughes began training roughly 15 years ago, following in the footsteps of three previous generations of trainers on his father’s side. There are horse racing connections on his mother’s side, too, so Hughes readily admits he was born to be a horseman. “I sleep and breathe them, eh?” he grins. “That’s it.”
He began his apprenticeship, fresh out of school, working for Mike Wade, who owned and trained Billyjojimbob, a trotter who would go on to make harness racing history in a story similar to San Pail. Wade had no more than a dozen horses, give or take, and it was only he and Hughes who looked after them.
But for years after that, Hughes didn’t have much stock to train on his own. In fact, when he came into the picture as the trainer of San Pail in 2006, he was a part-time blacksmith with only two cheap claiming trotters in his stable – and San Pail didn’t give any indication he would be significantly different. He was a horse nobody wanted. Van Camp had plans to sell the San Pellegrino-Village Beauty colt as a yearling. The dam had a great record of her offspring making it to the races; one of her foals, Donna Wallbanger, won 18 times, banking almost $260,000 before being sold to Swedish interests. Village Beauty is also a full-sister to Village Beretta, who banked $820,662 and won 39 times. But because San Pail developed an unsightly bump on one leg after being kicked by another horse, Van Camp opted not to enter him in any sales and turned him out instead. He received little interest from a half-dozen trainers who for one reason or another passed on conditioning the horse, perhaps because of Van Camp’s deal that wanted to give up three-quarters ownership in exchange for paying all the bills.
Hughes became a candidate to train the horse because he had been a customer of Van Camp’s son, Robert, who owns Brooks Feed. Hughes accepted the deal, and Van Camp told him that if the horse didn’t qualify for the races, he could sell him as a buggy horse and keep the money.
Looking back on the transaction now, Van Camp, who has been in the business of breeding and racing horses for more than 20 years, admits it has become a steal of a deal for Hughes. “A deal is a deal, so that’s the way it works,” shrugs Van Camp (without a hint of regret).
And understandably so. Who would have ever guessed San Pail would become the trotting machine that he is?
Maybe not even Hughes, who simply enjoys the trials and tribulations of training a trotter.
“You like ‘em or you hate ‘em,” he says. “I like them because there’s more to them. There’s more figuring, there’s more tinkering and they’re more delicate. You’ve got to drive them a little more. I just like the trotters because they are a little bit more difficult, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I’ve got no hair.”
Van Camp thinks the patience exercised by Hughes and his father, Jerry, who is also a trainer, contributed significantly to San Pail’s success. “I would say Hughes was very patient with him and that’s what he needed,” Van Camp says. “He needed that little extra care.”
“I crossed my fingers that it would all work out because I knew it was a really nice mare that he was out of,” admits Hughes. “And I just waited.”
He didn’t qualify San Pail for the races until late March of his three-year-old season. The highlight of that year was a victory in an Ontario Sires Stakes Gold elimination at Kawartha Downs in June. He won the race by two-and-a-half lengths in what was a track record time of 1:54.4. By this time, San Pail had attracted a following of friends and family of Hughes.
The gelding raced 24 times as a three-year-old, winning four times and banking roughly $145,000 in earnings, the lion’s share of that from a $36,000 payday after finishing third in the $300,000 OSS Super Final for three-year-old trotting colts and geldings at Woodbine on November 10. For the final five starts of San Pail’s first season of racing -- including that well-paying Super Final -- Hughes passed the lines over to Fergus native Randy Waples. “I drove him for almost all of his three-year-old year because he was too hot and I didn’t want to hand the lines over to anybody else,” Hughes admits. “I think he’s a horse that could have been easily ruined if you got after him too early or tried to leave with him or were rough with him. We had a lot of hard times. We made breaks. We had a few mistakes along the way, learned from them and carried on.”
The trainer gave the horse a couple months off after his first season and then qualified him. In his first six starts at four, he failed to win a race. In fact, he finished no better than third. Hughes tried taking over the driving duties from Waples for the next three races, but it didn’t help much. He broke once, in fact. So Waples reclaimed the reins and won his next two starts, only to have the horse break again the next time out -- his first try in the Open ranks. Jack Moiseyev tried as well -- he sat behind San Pail for the next two races, but the horse faltered badly, breaking stride yet again.
From that point forward, Waples jumped back in the bike, and San Pail managed to pull it together, slowly establishing himself as a hard-knocker in the Open ranks. “You’ve got to have a little more feel for the mouth (of trotters), and you can’t just hand the lines over to any catch driver,” says Hughes. “You’ve got to have somebody that’s working with you, I think. Randy’s done a great job for me, especially with this horse because he can be extremely hot. But on the right night he can be a pussycat, too.”
San Pail went on to win six of 28 starts as a four-year-old, though he had problems with his appetite two weeks before the Maple Leaf Trot and missed his first shot at the title when Hughes opted not to race him, though sustaining payments had been made. In the end, the trainer never did figure out what caused the horse to go off his feed.
Earlier that year, Hughes bought a 150-acre farm with plans to construct a half-mile racetrack and nine-stall barn. It was well timed – by the end of 2008, the horse had earnings of $179,120, giving Hughes some financial breathing room. But San Pail still had a whole lot more paydays to go. He began his five-year-old season racing in the Glorys Comet series, winning a division of the second leg and qualifying for the final (he finished fifth). He raced back in Open company after that and won two of his next three races. While he didn’t record a victory in his next four starts, he soon after began a winning streak, pocketing four victories in a four-week span from May to June. With a little luck, it would all go as planned for Hughes ... he was hoping his horse would be at his peak by the Maple Leaf Trot.
In his division the week before the final, San Pail faced Lucky Jim, and Hughes had some simple instructions for Waples. “Don’t count us out of the race and don’t hand the race to Lucky Jim,” he stressed. “Take a swing at him.”
San Pail finished second by one-and-a-quarter lengths and afterward Waples blamed himself for taxing the horse. In retrospect, however, it may have been just what San Pail needed to toughen him up (mentally and physically) for the big day.
In the final, Waples made a shrewd move early in the race to grab the pocket spot, away from any traffic. Lucky Jim, meanwhile, settled in sixth at quarter, well behind the leaders, and found himself in a jackpot of trouble later in the race because of a horse breaking stride. By this point, Waples had his horse in front, at war with Arch Madness. The two slugged it out in the stretch while Lucky Jim struggled to make up lost ground in third. San Pail prevailed by a quarter-length over Arch Madness, followed shortly behind by Lucky Jim, who made an uncharacteristic break in deep stretch.
“He’s rebounded this year and just came back large, so it’s worked out great for everybody,” Hughes said of his gelding just moments after the race. “Pail got on a win streak, winning four, and got beat a nose, which was a nice way to lose one. It takes the monkey off your back, so to speak. Jim’s a tough horse. That was a tough race and he went a tough race last week and I think that cost him. My horse just hadn’t been stretched in so long. Getting stretched out last week I think helped him. He came out of the race great and look how he came back.”
Hughes praised Waples, who bagged his first driving win in the Canadian classic (his legendary father Ron won it five times). “I couldn’t be any happier,” grinned Waples after the win. “I’m an emotional guy. This is sweet; really sweet. When I was a little kid I used to walk into Greenwood and see the big plaques on the wall, all the winners of the Canadian Pacing Derby and the Maple Leaf Trot, they were the two races to win when I was young. Now my name's on both of them.”
“Randy’s quiet, and he listens,” smiles Hughes. “I’m not saying Randy can’t get a little wound up, but he listens, and always asks how the horse is. He knows San Pail’s temperament and he respects what I tell him.”
Ironically enough, San Pail’s big win coincided with the completion of Hughes’ new barn. “This is definitely going to help pay the bills,” admits the trainer. “He’s helped us buy our farm and build everything that we’re doing. Even without this race, I was trying to set myself up for training horses in the future. I’ve looked after everything at home right now, so I’m ready to go.”
This was clearly a victory for the little guy, one who rarely gets a chance to savour success in the big races.
“It’s tough,” Van Camp says. “As a rule (the small stables) don’t get the good horses and that makes the difference.”
But every once in a while, of course, it does happen.
“The Hughes’ have done a marvelous job with the horse,” says Van Camp’s son Paul. “You wouldn’t get a better cared for horse anywhere. Two-on-one, maybe three-on-one attention. They’ve done a phenomenal job. And Randy Waples’ drive? How can you beat that? He got him out at the right time in tough traffic. It’s just a dream come true for everybody.
“The Maple Leaf Trot is the number one race in Canada for any aged trotter. Stopping Lucky Jim, who’s such a phenomenal horse, is like beating Tiger Woods in a playoff. It’s phenomenal to beat him. It’s not a strike against Lucky Jim. He’s a great horse, we just had a great race and the horse was ready at the right time. Horse racing in Ontario is about dreams. It’s a tough, tough business. It’s so hard to make money. Every person out here was having a little dream with Rod and Jerry and my dad. It’s a small guy’s story and that’s why it’s so special.”