Coming off a breakout year in 2014, five-year-old pacer Nickle Bag has kept harness racing a family affair for the Loyens clan.

For 70-year-old Denfield, Ontario resident Linda Loyens, owning Nickle Bag, one of Woodbine Racetrack's hottest pacers, has been the highlight of her involvement in harness racing over the past five decades. While she's been involved with horses like Survivor Gold, winner of nearly $900,000 in the early 1990s, being able to share Nickle Bag's recent success with her grandchildren has been most enjoyable.

“We always watch; my daughter and her husband and grandchildren always come here. We don’t go to Woodbine because in the winter it’s a hell of a drive, so we watch on the racing channel and sit and have a glass of wine and jump up and down and act silly,” laughed Linda, wife of the late Frank Loyens, who passed away in 2013, and co-owner of Nickle Bag with her brother-in-law Harry.

Nickle Bag has given the Loyens family lots to cheer for as of late as he put together a career-best season in his four-year-old campaign, rising to the top Preferred level on the Woodbine Entertainment Group circuit. The bay gelding earned 11 wins plus 18 other top-three finishes in 47 starts and $226,070 in purses.

He’s started off the new year with two wins and two seconds in five Preferred events and has already added another $52,700 to his bankroll. In his last race on February 7, Nickle Bag took a new lifetime mark and became Canada’s first sub-1:50 winner of the year as he edged out Musselsfrmbrussels in 1:49.4 over the fast track on a -5 degree evening.

Only three horses have posted sub-1:50 winning miles earlier in the year on Canadian soil – Ramegade Bruiser (January 4, 2009), Stonebridge On Ice (January 23, 2010) and Little Amos (January 26, 2008) have each recorded 1:49.4 victories at Woodbine during the month of January.

Not bad for a horse that was once a small $4,000 yearling.

Undeterred by his size, brothers Frank and Harry purchased the son of Rocknroll Hanover and the Four Starzzz Shark mare Buckle Bunni at the 2011 Harrisburg Sale.

“He wasn’t very big, but everything else looked good on him. His mother is a [half] sister to the dam of Put On A Show so we thought there was lots of pedigree there," said Harry, who had partnered with Frank, his other brother Bill and their wives on many horses since the late 1950s.

With time, Nickle Bag developed and continued to improve.

“He was a tiny, little horse and now he’s a nice-sized horse,” said Harry. “He just grew up and we were really lucky to get a horse like him. And definitely [trainer] Shawn Robinson has done a hell of a job for us.”

Nickle Bag won just three of his 32 starts during his first two seasons on the track, but learned some important lessons along the way.

“As a two-year-old, Chris Christoforou would always come off the back and just teach him how to finish,” explained Harry. “And then as a three-year-old, we still raced him kind of easy and he got better all the time.”

“He really bloomed as a four-year-old,” said Robinson. “He’s just got better and better. We did some changes on him early on. We let his hopples out and changed his shoeing and from there on in he just kind of turned into a great horse.

“He’s very good to deal with. He’s happy, he’s quite a character. Actually, my son takes care of him -- he paddocks him and everything. He’s like the barn pet. He’s a very nice horse to be around.”

Nickle Bag has accumulated just under $350,000 in purse earnings during his career so far without any stakes starts, but that could change this year.

“This year we put him in a couple of stakes,” said Harry. “Really, I was quite happy not to be staking him too much, but Shawn said you better put him in two or three stakes so we did that.”

On the advice of his trainer, Nickle Bag could have a limited stakes schedule consisting of the Canadian Pacing Derby and Breeders Crown.

“If he keeps going the way he’s going, that’s a possibility for sure,” said Robinson. “We'll just see how it goes, take it week by week. The way he is going now, he should be able to handle, well, not anything, but the horses he’s been racing against he’s definitely competitive with.”

“I hope he does stay sound and he races well. That’s all we can hope for I guess,” said Linda of the potential for owning another stakes horse.

“Between me and Bill Robinson, we constantly say, too bad Frank isn’t here to see this. He would be on cloud nine!"

Nickle Bag will be aiming to extend his current win streak to three in Woodbine Racetrack’s $34,000 Preferred Pace, scheduled as race 10 on Saturday night with an approximate 10:25 p.m. post time. Trevor Henry will drive the 8-5 morning line favourite from post two.

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