Claude Levesque, president of the Québec Jockey Club and prominent Standardbred owner and breeder, is excited for the start of the 2021 race season at Hippodrome 3R.

"There is not that much to say," Levesque laughed, "except that we are very excited to get our race meet underway and that we are ready to race!"

The Hippodrome 3R opening day Friday (May 7) card gets underway with a special post time of 5:30 p.m. A free race program is available at www.hippodrome3r.ca.

"The weather forecast for Friday is excellent," Levesque added. “Our racetrack surface is in prime shape. We have 10 races, all with full fields of eight horses, and I know that our horsepeople are ready to return to racing.

“All that we are missing is our race fans,” Levesque said. “And maybe we will be able to add them by mid-summer, but we are not counting on that. It would be great as racing is not the same without race fans cheering. I am glad we are able to start racing. We will be the only track in all of Canada racing Friday.

“Most important,” Levesque added, “is that we will continue to do COVID protocols in our race paddock. I am proud of all our employees and our horsepeople who did safe practice, as we did not have one COVID case all last season and we want the same again this season.

“We also want to see how many horses are entered for our qualifying races on Saturday,” Levesque explained. “If there are a lot more horses coming here to qualify, we might even consider racing two days next week, Friday and Sunday. But we have to wait and see on that.”

For opening day, there are two Preferred Paces and one Preferred Trot on the race card.

The Preferred 1 Pace, carded as race seven, features Mickeymaksomespeed, a nine-time winner last year, from post five for driver Richard Simard and trainer Michel Allard. Mickeymaksomespeed won his qualifying race last week at H3R in 1:59.4 by 3-1/4 lengths and takes on Big Petes Style (post one), also a qualifying winner last week in 1:59.4, as well as Woodbine invaders Solid Man (post six) and Take The Deal (post seven).

The Preferred Handicap Trot (race five) features top mare Kinnder High Class (post six), who won 10 of 13 starts and set a track record last season at H3R. The lone mare in the field, Kinnder High Class will go up against track record holder Wildwild Men (post eight), Franks Angel (post seven), and Pompano Park shipper Captain Krupnik (post three).

Trainer Francis Richard, who will be gunning for his fifth straight training title at H3R, is back in action along with last season’s leading driver, Pascal Bérubé.

For more information, visit www.hippodrome3r.ca. The website is in both French and English.

To view Friday's complete entries, click the following link: Friday Entries – Hippodrome 3R.

(Québec Jockey Club)