Richard Moreau has been Canada’s perennial top trainer for nearly a decade and returns to the O’Brien Awards again as a finalist for Trainer of the Year in pursuit of his eighth consecutive trainer of the year title. In order to win he'll have to compete with first-time finalist Ben Baillargeon.

“We both deserve to win, and if it goes to him he’s got eight. I only want one!” Baillargeon told Trot Insider with a laugh.

The Quebec native and Guelph, Ont. resident has proven himself among Canada’s top trainers year after year. Since 2001, Baillargeon has recorded million-dollar seasons every year but one, and has campaigned numerous horses to O’Brien Awards consideration. In the last five years, Baillargeon has accumulated seven nominations with four wins to his credit thanks to Alarm Detector (2017 Two-Year-Old Trotting Colt), Run Director (2018 Three-Year-Old Trotting Colt), HP Royal Theo (2019 Two-Year-Old Trotting Colt) and three-time finalist Musical Rhythm (2019 Older Trotting Horse).

“We put in the hours and we put in the work,” said Baillargeon. “Just hard work. Me? I just work. I’m pretty steady. Every year I come back and the numbers are pretty good. I’m proud of being steady. We don’t go crazy, and you know sometimes there’s people you hear from them and all of a sudden you hear nothing. Me, I’m always there. I don’t win them all, but I’m there. I’ve been around there for so long and I’m still around. Lots of comes and not too many stays, and I’m proud to be one of the ones that stays.”

O'Brien Award finalist P L Jill

Hard work by Baillargeon paid off the tune of a career-best season despite the near two-month suspension of harness racing at the start of the global pandemic. Despite the shutdown, Baillargeon edged past his previous season’s best in the money column, winning 124 races from 602 starts and earning $2,978,706. His previous record came in 2008, when he sent out 137 winners from 904 starts and banked $2,967,027.

“I think when we stopped because of COVID, some of my horses needed a break. They all came back very strong. We work hard before we start back racing...there are some days we finish training horses at 1:30, 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We were very busy, and it paid off when we started. It really worked out. I had horses at technically every track. It was the best year of my life probably numbers wise.”

Among the horses that built Baillargeon’s career year is P L Jill, herself an O’Brien Award finalist for Older Trotting Mare of the Year. Since coming into Baillargeon’s care in 2018, the now eight-year-old daughter of Kadabra has developed into a mare that toyed with some of the best trotting competition at Woodbine Mohawk Park. Winning seven times at the Preferred level and giving Baillargeon back-to-back titles in the Earl Rowe Invitational at Georgian Downs, P L Jill banked $241,060 and established herself deserving of an O’Brien Award nomination alongside Hey Livvy, a mare for which Baillargeon has high respect.

“She’s a money maker...she’s an ATM card,” Baillargeon said of P L Jill. “She’s very hard to handle. In a race she’s okay, but everything besides the race before it's time to race...they don’t even warm her up at night because she’s a pain in the neck. At the farm, I get away with it with her. She’s been nothing but good since I’ve had her. She’s got speed and lots of endurance. She’s tough.

“I don’t think she’ll win; I think Hey Livvy will win the award because she won the Armbro Flight, but you never know,” Baillargeon also said. “She deserves to win it just as much as the other one, but the other one won the Armbro Flight which is a big race. Myself, I’d give it to Hey Livvy, she’s won a few Preferreds too.”

The strength of Baillargeon’s stable showed itself through the summer and into the winter months. HP Royal Theo returned off his O’Brien Award win to, in his third start of the year, equal the Canadian record for three-year-old trotting geldings over a five-eighths mile track, and ended the year banking just north of $200,000. Voelz Delight, a pacing filly out of former Baillargeon trainee Voelz Hanover, showed herself a constant competitor against the province’s top freshmen pacing fillies and ended her $164,943 season just a head shy of winning the Super Final. Baillargeon did manage a Super Final victory however with his three-year-old Big Jim gelding Rhythm In Motion, himself an earner of $259,185 last season.

“Overall it was a great year. We started back in June and we were ready to go, and things were clicking. Horses were getting the good trips, and a lot of them didn’t have that much earnings, so they went on and won and won and won.”

With the types of numbers Baillargeon posted in 2020, the notification of his place as an O’Brien finalist for Trainer of the Year came as no surprise.

“I don’t want to be cocky, but I thought I deserved to be nominated this year,” Baillargeon said. “I know I had a great enough year to be nominated for an O’Brien Award. The last few years I’ve always had a horse or two nominated for an award. The last thing it needed to be was me. This was what I wanted to be nominated for at the beginning of the year, and now let's see if I win it. I think I deserve to win, but you never know. Richard [Moreau] is tough to beat all the time.”

Baillargeon feels just as strongly that winning Trainer of the Year would serve as a testament to the work and the hours his team puts in year after year, including Sara Baillargeon, Ashley Leslie and Outstanding Groom finalist Tanya Mitchell.

“Ashley -- she’s been working for me for five, six years,” Baillargeon said. “Tanya has been working for me for a few years and Sara...without those three, I don’t think I’d have that many horses. There’s my wife [Guylaine Picard] too, and she works just as hard.

“It’s not just [for] me, it's for everybody in the barn. Even my owners and my staff...my owners, they’re all happy for me. As soon as I got nominated they called me, ‘That’s yours! You’re going to win it!’ It would be great to win it not just for me but for all the owners that have been part of it and all my staff.”

In accordance with pandemic guidelines, this year’s O’Brien Awards ceremony will be hosted virtually -- a circumstance which comes at no chagrin to Baillargeon.

“I’m sure we’re going to have the computer on,” Baillargeon said. “My wife and Sara...me, I’m not really the party guy any more. I’m okay, I will watch it. I’ve been attending the O’Brien Awards for the last four or five years, I don’t mind it. But I think the girls will miss it more than me. They like to get dressed up once a year. Me? I’m going to save money [by not renting a tuxedo]. I’m okay with that.”

The 2020 Virtual O’Brien Awards Gala takes place on Sunday, January 31, 2021 and will be available for viewing on standardbredcanada.ca from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. (EST).