She's cut herself enough slack to start taking annual winter vacations although Casie Coleman, one of the continent's top trainers, isn't completely indulging in leisure time during her 2010 stay in South Florida either

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"I never used to take vacations but now I find it's absolutely necessary and I'm better for it for sure when the most hectic summer season gets here," Coleman said in a live TV interview at the Isle Casino Racing Pompano Park just before the Monday evening, February 22 program. "This week Blake [companion Blake MacIntosh] and I will get a lot of rest and relaxation time but we'll also be going to the training centres to look at some two-year-olds in training we've heard are for sale. And of course I'm constantly checking in on my stables back in Ontario and in New Jersey," she adds.

In those operations at present are 46 horses in Ontario and 16 in New Jersey. After recently earning her third award as Canada's leading trainer from 2009, Coleman was quick to point out the importance of her help to operate in the manner she does.

"My help is just unbelievable, without them I'm really at a huge loss to explain where I'd be," she says. "That tradition of taking them all to the O'Brien Awards dates to the first time I was nominated over four years ago when I had a much smaller staff. This year I ended up taking a party of 28 people at $200 each but it is so worth it since it is a team effort. At present I have six assistant trainers and 12 grooms working for me. In my New Jersey stable, Andrew Harris is doing a fantastic job. The stable is coming off our best year ever with 276 wins and over $6.1 million in purse earnings. We're looking forward now as a team and we're going to try and top that again in 2010," she states.

While at Pompano, she's also hoping to see a former stable stalwart, Our Lucky Killean, now racing for Ontario owner Mac Nichol from the Florida stable of Mike Deters. Coleman says the decision was made to send the millionaire veteran gelding to race in Florida because he deserves to be warm in the winter after all of the great races he turned in earlier in his career. The trainer says she might consider sending other horses here in the future but a full third stable in addition to Ontario and New Jersey would be just too much to juggle at this time, although extensive claiming activity is still at the forefront of her 2010 plans for Yonkers, Chester, and The Meadowlands.

In the Monday evening interview in the winner's circle at the Isle, Coleman calls the burn injuries she received in a 1998 stable accident in her native British Columbia 'career changing'. Until then, she'd made her focus the pursuit of becoming a driver. That dream had to be abandoned over seven years ago, she explains, because of the extensive skin grafts and six months of therapy, which followed leaving her suspectible to infections and extreme discomfort in cold weather. Never one to forget those that helped her along the way, she spearheaded a 2009 fundraiser at Fraser Downs, which raised almost $25,000 for the hospital burn unit that she said 'put her back together again.'

Since 2005 Coleman has been among the most recognizable names in the game across the continent. A smile crosses Casie's face when she's reminded of her first training win at Sandown Park in July of 1998 with $2,500 claiming pacer Frosty Road and her first driving win on November 19, 2000 at Fraser Downs with 45-1 longshot $6,000 claiming pacer Southside Pride who was trained by her dad, Phil.

"Really when I got my first O'Brien award nomination it was just amazing to me since I was still just a kid from British Columbia trying to make it Ontario," she said in the trackside live interview. "To think of the horses I've had in recent years, among them American Ideal, Moving Pictures and Chancey Lady, it's been an amazing run which I hope will continue this year."

And there's every reason to think it will. She appears to find it tough to contain her enthusiasm about the prospects for the upcoming three-year-old season for Sportswriter, the continent's 2009 two-year-old pacing colt of the year and Metro Pace champion. "I don't think he could be coming back any better," Coleman told the South Florida trackside crowd on Monday evening. "He's bigger and stronger than last year. I've only trained him back lightly and free-legged so far but it won't surprise me if I have to let his hopples out three inches," she said.

After this week in the Pompano Beach area, Casie and Blake will finish off their winter sojourn with a week in the Caribbean aboard the recently unveiled Oasis Of The Sea, advertised as the largest cruise ship in history. She also says she's bracing for a milestone birthday, which is just over three months away.

"Well it's the computer age and I'm not liking it too much that people are often asking me what it'll be like to turn 30 years old in June," she says with a laugh. "I never could have thought in 2000 that all of this would come my way over the next 10 years. I'm working on finding a better work and life balance as this vacation would show. Turning 30 may be coming a bit faster than I really wanted it to but I still feel like I'm 20."

(Pompano Park)