The older trotting ranks are about to get a little more interesting with new kid on the block Daylon Magician nearing his four-year-old debut

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A magical sophomore campaign has Daylon Magician primed to tackle the Open trotters in the coming stakes season. The richest son of Kadabra, who was bred by owners David Lemon and his wife Mary, earned over $1 million of his $1.29 million bankroll last year. He put together a record reading 11-2-3 in 17 starts with his biggest victory in the Canadian Trotting Classic. Daylon Magician lowered several stakes, track and Canadian records along the way and tied the World Record of 1:54.2 for three-year-old trotters on a half-mile track. He later collected year-end honours at the SBOA awards banquet as the top three-year-old trotting colt in the Ontario Sires Stakes program and was named the nation’s best in his division at the O’Brien Awards.

Daylon Magician, who began training back in mid-January at Lemon’s Komoka, Ont. farm with visits to London for some faster miles over Western Fair Raceway, will be ready to qualify later this week.

“We trained him pretty good the last couple of weeks and we’re planning on qualifying him this Thursday at Mohawk,” Lemon told Trot Insider this past weekend. “He’s bigger than he was, but he’s still growing and his attitude is about the same as it always was -- he likes to go, you don’t have to ask him twice.

“[Driver] Jack Moiseyev has been getting edgy,” he added with a laugh. “He says when are you getting him down here!”

While Daylon Magician will be putting in a charted mile this week, his first stakes event won’t be for another two months. The Honourable Earl Rowe Memorial Trot on May 26 at Georgian Downs will be his first big race.

“Right off the start we’ll just try and find a couple races at Woodbine for him to show us how he’s going to come back,” explained Lemon. “We paid him into seven or eight stakes during the summer so it just depends, he’ll let us know where he goes. If everything goes good we’ll have to take him around to these different tracks.”

Some of the stakes on his radar are the Masters Series at Georgian, Maple Leaf Trot at Mohawk Racetrack, Frank Ryan Memorial Trot at Rideau Carleton Raceway and the Breeders Crown at Woodbine Racetrack.

Stepping up into the older trotting division, Daylon Magician will eventually be facing the likes of three-time Maple Leaf Trot champion San Pail, who just won his first race of the season in the opening leg of the Glorys Comet Series at Woodbine. Lemon says it’s difficult to judge at this point how Daylon Magician will stack up against the current divisional heavyweights, but he seems to have as good of a chance as possible going into the season.

“He did pretty good last year when he was feeling good and he’s training right now as good as he’s ever been so we have high hopes,” said the 71-year-old horseman. “We’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”