Saturday’s Battle of Alberta Super Finals at Alberta Downs will showcase the province’s best young horses in addition to the top horsemen and women, but one award-winning horseman will be noticeably absent from the race bike.

Kelly Hoerdt, the 2013 O’Brien Award of Horsemanship winner, is still recovering from injuries sustained in a racing accident back in September and will not be driving in this year’s Super Finals, but he will send out six starters from his stable in the four $70,000 championship races.

Among his starters is Blue Star Escape, the three-year-old pacing filly Hoerdt was driving in that Sept. 13 accident in the ASHA Stakes.

“She came out of it way better than I did,” said Hoerdt, who suffered a broken bone in his ankle and anticipates another six to eight weeks of recovery time ahead of him before he can return to the sulky. “She had a couple of pretty big scrapes, but we had her stitched up and she healed up pretty good within the first two weeks after the accident. She’s good to go now.”

Hoerdt says he hasn’t been able to make it to the racetrack much since the accident, but he has been to the farm every day to oversee his stable and he does plan to attend Saturday’s Super Finals.

The task of selecting a driver for his trainees is not something the Beaumont, Alberta horseman usually has to worry about as he regularly drives his own horses, but Hoerdt has entrusted top British Columbia reinsman Jim Marino with many of his mounts and says he has become an asset to his team.

“I try to get somebody that can match up with the horse the best I can,” said Hoerdt. “I’ve been getting Jim Marino from B.C. to drive most of my stakes horses. He has an extensive amount of stakes race experience and I’ve been lucky enough that he’s been available. He’s been coming in every weekend and driving some of my better stakes horses for me so I’m fortunate that way. And I’ve got some other guys that I’ve been trying to match up to the style of horse that I have. Right now the better horses you have, the better luck you’re going to have getting the better drivers.”

Marino will be driving Hoerdt’s other three-year-old pacing filly Barona Mercedes and his top two-year-old pacing colt Cool Cowboy.

Barona Mercedes made just a couple of appearances at the races as a freshman and has won five of her 12 sophomore starts and $64,035 in purses with her “shining moment” a 1:53.1 career-best victory in the Alberta Sires Stakes Diamond Final on Aug. 23.

“She was just too growthy and she had a lot of catching up to do maturing wise,” said Hoerdt, addressing her brief two-year-old campaign. "I raced her once or twice as a two-year-old and decided she was a good enough filly that I was going to give her the time off and let her mature.

“She’s ready to go. She’s lightly raced this year so she’s fresh and we’re hoping for a good performance out of her.”

Being a versatile filly, Barona Mercedes’ outer post seven starting spot in the Super Final doesn’t concern Hoerdt. Her stablemate Blue Star Escape will start from post four with Philip Giesbrecht picking up the catch-drive.

Cool Cowboy has also drawn post seven in his Super Final, but Hoerdt has high praise for the talented youngster.

“Cool Cowboy is for sure one of the best Alberta-bred colts I’ve ever had,” said Hoerdt. “He’s very versatile and he’s a tough horse -- he can race from the outside, he can leave, and he can race from off the pace. He’s just a very versatile colt and he’s got a lot of talent. He’s the best horse I’m going to be putting forward in the Super Finals this weekend for sure.”

The Brandons Cowboy-Cool Grin colt has never missed the board in nine starts, good for $33,919 in earnings, with his lone victory in the Alberta Sires Stakes Rising Star division on Aug. 10 in a big 1:55.4 mile.

“He’s just a well built and clean gaited horse,” said Hoerdt. “The attitude on him is one of the best. He’s great to work with at the barn and he doesn’t lose track of his work. He knows what he has to do when he goes behind the gate. He’s still a stud, but he doesn’t act like a stud in any of his mannerisms. He does what’s asked of him and he likes his job.”

Hoerdt also shared some insight with Trot Insider on his other Super Final starters.

Two-year-old pacing colt Vow To Win (Post 1, Gerry Hudon): “He’s been really good. He’s still a colt -- still a stallion -- and his mind wanders sometimes to what his job is, but when he puts it all together he’s got a lot of talent and a lot of speed too.”

Three-year-old pacing colt Outlaw Gunpowder (Post 8, Philip Giesbrecht): “I bought him privately from Glenn White in B.C. [at the end of July] and he’s just progressively got better and better throughout the year. His last two starts for me have been the best starts for me and it’s a really good time because they were both a stakes elimination and a stakes final and he paced a new lifetime mark his last start [Oct. 19] in [1]:53.3. I think his best days are still ahead of him. He’s been growing over the last few months and he’s getting better and better all the time. It’s a tough field as far as the boys go compared to the fillies. It’s a lot more competitive in the boys division this year and he’s definitely going to have to have some things go his way with the number eight post position, but he’s shown that he’s as good as the rest and he’s going into the race in very good condition.”

Two-year-old pacing filly Hot Time (Post 5, Bill Tainsh Jr.): “She’s another one that has come along well. Bill Tainsh has brought her along in a really good way teaching her and she’s got better and better every start as well. That’s a horse I’m really looking forward to being a really good three-year-old. She hasn’t got the experience and she hasn’t quite matured as much as I would like yet, but she’s definitely a contender with the horses that she’s in against.”

First race post time for Saturday's 12-race card is 1:15 p.m.

Click here for free, printable program pages for Saturday's harness racing card, courtesy TrackIT.

To view Saturday's harness racing entries, click on the following link: Saturday Entries - Alberta Downs.