With improving win totals the last three years, Gaetan Lamy has the stats of an emerging driver, not someone who just turned 70.

But the veteran Quebec driver already has decided this will be his last year.

"It'll be 50 years for me as a driver in June, 60 years in total in the business, since I got my groom's licence at 10. That seems like a good place to exit. My health is still good though I do have some arthritis. It`ll be time for my other passions, like hunting, fishing and camping. And of course I'll still go to the races, but as a spectator," said Lamy, who spent his childhood visiting small tracks around the province with his father Roger, an avid horse owner.

An O'Brien award winner as Canadian driver of the year in 1992, when he won a career-high 553 races, Lamy stepped away from the sport once before, in 2009, but came back the following year.

He recorded a single win in 2014, but upped his total to 25 in 2015 and 44 in 2016, when he led the drivers' standings at Hippodrome 3R for two months.

"I don't think too many 69-year-olds have ever done that," he noted.

Lamy, who won with his first professional drive at Trois-Rivieres in 1967, has more than 6,700 career wins. He counts the O'Brien award and being selected to represent Canada at a drivers' tournament in Russia among this career highlights.

His favourite horses? Without hesitation, he names three: multiple stakes winners Power Park and Bolero Takara, and the ultra-consistent Totheletter.

Gaetan Lamy guides Bolero Takara to victory at The Red Mile. Bolero Takara would go on to produce Shamballa and Ys Lotus

(A Trot Insider Exclusive by Paul Delean)