Horseman Victor Puddy quietly emerged as one of Canada’s top trainers in 2013 with his first million-dollar season in more than two decades of training horses and is currently on pace to make 2014 even better.

The 49-year-old trainer reached the $1 million mark in seasonal earnings with his final victory of the year on Dec. 28, 2013 at Woodbine Racetrack with pacer My Man Charley hanging on by half a length in the seventh race.

“The fact that we were so close and then there were so many cancellations, I didn’t think I was going to get over the million,” laughed Puddy, reflecting on the eleventh-hour achievement.

With 137 victories last year, Puddy was the second-leading trainer nation-wide behind O’Brien Award nominee Richard Moreau. He earned 49 of those wins and $216,763 in purses at Flamboro Downs to take the track’s 2013 training title and was among the top 10 horsemen at Grand River Raceway, Western Fair Raceway and on the Woodbine Entertainment Group circuit.

“It was nice every time we went to the track we pretty well came home with a winner,” said Puddy, whose stable of 35 consists mainly of racehorses with a handful of babies. “Just having horses to race at Mohawk and Woodbine, and Preferred horses, it just helped out a lot. It was great.”

Nearly doubling his earnings and wins from the previous year, Puddy credits his owners in assisting his career-best season. Prior to 2013, he boasted career-highs of $653,839 in earnings in 2002 and 119 wins in 2003.

“I just thought we’d have a pretty good year because we picked up some new owners and they were buying the good horses and it just worked out,” said Puddy, who is plying away and hoping for the best as the Ontario horse racing industry undergoes major changes due to the cancellation of the Slots-At-Racetracks program.

“We’re still doing the same as what we were doing, we just don’t race for the money that we did before,” said Puddy. “I’m just lucky my owners kept the horses here and didn’t move them to the States.

“It just makes for a lot of trucking. We just have to go to Flamboro and London and truck all over to get the horses raced to keep them. I just put them in where I think they can make [the owners] money and if I have to truck to London for that class then I do it. I’m going up there with one or two horses. Before you’d say, well, you’d better have three or four.”

Puddy began training a couple horses in Ottawa with family and friends. When he finished school, a couple of horses turned into a couple more until managing his stable grew into a full-time career.

“When Quebec closed, I moved up here seven years ago,” he said. “I thought I’d come up and try six months here and it’s now going on seven years. It was a great move.”

Now one month into the 2014 racing season, Puddy continues to hold a prominent position on the Canadian leaderboard and is on pace to break his career-high numbers with just over $100,000 in earnings and 12 wins from 89 starts in January. Will 2014 be his best year yet?