Warm tears rinsed radiant smiles as Custers Stand won one of four $80,000 Alberta Sires Stakes Super Final on Saturday night at Century Mile.

Custers Stand is owned in part by Willie Neish, who is suffering from the onset of dementia but was able to make the trip to Edmonton from his Father Lacombe Care Centre Nursing Home in south Calgary for the race.

“Everybody was cheering for Custers Stand; they all wanted Willie to win this race,” said Dianne Neish, Willie’s wife of 60 years, who lives in High River.

A two-year-old colt, Custers Stand won by a neck in a desperate, hard fought stretch battle with Momas Work Of Art. Also owned by Len Denham, Custers Stand earned his third win in a row.

“I wish Willie could watch him race more often,” said Dianne, whose daughter Kelly Martens and her husband Dean drove her and Willie, who was diagnosed with dementia last January, to Edmonton. “It was a very emotional weekend but it was lovely. It was so good he could watch the race.

“He was the one who picked him out at last year’s Alberta yearling sale.

“Willie had a big smile on his face. For the most part, he was very coherent. He had a couple of Caesars. He had something to eat. He walked,” said Dianne, who broke her femur in a fall in July."

“After the race Willie gave me a big hug,” said winning driver Phil Giesbrecht, who also won the Super Final for two-year-old fillies with Custard Dolce, an easy winner while recording her eighth in a row. “Like just about everyone else, I had tears in my eyes."

Willie, 82, also shook breeder Jim Rhodes’ hand.

“You really know how to breed a good horse,” Willie, who was in the pure-bred cattle business, told Rhodes.

But then, the race over, the Neishs had to make the long, solemn drive home.

“As we were leaving, Willie saw our trainer, Marie Brooking,” said Dianne, 80. “He rolled down the window and gave her a big thumbs up.”

And then he cried.

So did Dianne.

So did Brooking, one of the few women trainers to win a stakes race in Alberta.

“He asked me, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’” said Dianne, who visits her husband every day. “I think his spirit is broken. He’s basically in a jail cell locked up. What a way to end your life. I feel guilty I have to do this to him. I wish I could have kept him at home. He was so physically active all his life. Now it’s all been taken away from him.”

Willie also has macular degeneration for which, like dementia, has no cure.

“I’m praying for a miracle. It’s all I can do. I’ve been crying since we dropped him off,” Dianne said on Sunday morning.

“Every time I hugged Willie, he cried,” said Brooking, who has been training a small stable since 1992. “Dianne was holding Willie’s hand. Holding his arm. They truly love each other.”

Brooking’s daughter, Brinsley Brooking-Lutz, is also having a great season with 48 wins from 217 starts. Brooking-Lutz had two more wins on Friday.

By Custard The Dragon, Custers Stand is out of the top producing broodmare China Art.

China Art now has a yearling by hot sire Captain Deo and is back in foal to Captain Deo, a son of Hall of Fame inductee Somebeachsomewhere, who tied the all-age world record at the time winning at The Red Mile in 1:46.4 and earned $3,328,755 in his career.

Fifth during the early going, Giesbrecht pulled Custers Stand first-over down the backstretch -- just like he had when Custers Stand won his previous start, a division of the Alberta Shooting Star.

With a half going in :57.3 and three-quarters in 1:27.1, Custers Stand hooked up with favourite Outlawminutbyminut at the top of the stretch, pulled clear and then had to hold off the charge of Momas Work Of Art with the mile going in 1:55.4 -- the last quarter-mile going in :28.3.

Because of the early morning snow, Brooking said the track was one to two seconds off.

“It was a little greasy -- especially the four and five paths and we were in post five so I was a little nervous.”

“Custers Stand is a tough little bugger coming down the stretch,” praised Dianne, who watched the race with Willie from inside the casino.

“Custers Stand is not a big horse; Outlawminutbyminut is big,” said Brooking. “When they were side by side, it was like David and Goliath.

“I didn’t want to be that far back early,” said Giesbrecht. “But he gutted it out.”

“When he cleared, I was yelling, ‘Come on George; come on George!’” said Brooking, referring to Custers Stand’s stable name. “Then I was like, ‘Where’s the wire? Where’s the wire?’ It was a hard fought battle."

Brooking said in a recent Horse Racing Alberta story that, “When Custers Stand won the Rocky Mountain and then [the] Shooting Star at Century Mile, Willie was telling everyone in the retirement/nursing home about the horse. He showed them his winner’s circle photos, showed them a replay of the races that his daughter downloaded and walks around the home telling everyone that his horse won. I’m sure he’s doing that again this week.”

Brooking said that after the race, Serge Masse, the driver of runner-up Momas Work Of Art, came up to her and said, "I thought for sure I had you," said Brooking, who watched the race from the paddock office.

“He almost did,” said Brooking.

Almost.

(Curtis Stock / thehorses.com)