You probably got a decent chuckle if you watched Red Shores’ live card of racing on Sunday, November 29 at Charlottetown Driving Park. The official chart doesn’t indicate it, and some may not have noticed it, but an absolutely irregular occurrence took place in Race 7.

The chart from the race simply reflects that the Ronnie Gass-trained and driven Smiley Bayama started from Post 3 and recorded a wire-to-wire victory in 1:59.2.

The seven-year-old Aces Up bay returned a healthy $22.80 win mutuel for the sharp performance, but that was far from an odd occurrence. The odd occurrence is that Gass got the job done while ensuring his helmet didn’t launch into the field of trailing horses.

What?

“The strap unfastened and I have no idea how it happened,” Gass told Trot Insider. “We’ve been getting a lot of rain recently. Maybe something on it started to rust or something, I really don’t know.”

Gass told Trot Insider that he was on double duty at stages in the race – he was holding a couple of things together.

“I was actually holding onto it (the helmet’s strap) with my chin,” he said. “I could feel it start to slide off my head, but I was able to lean on the strap with my chin.”

Like that feat wasn’t hard enough itself, Gass had something else that he had to take care of as well.

“My horse was bearing in and I couldn’t just grab it (the helmet), so I kept it from flying off. When my horse straightened up I was able to grab it and make sure that it didn’t fly off.”

After his nifty maneuver – which came after the three-quarters of a mile marker – Gass held the helmet in his lap as he cruised through the lane for the two-length victory.

“It would be one thing if I was at the back, but, being on the lead, I knew that if it came off it could lead to a pretty bad situation,” said Gass.

“I’m just glad that it all worked out. Nobody got hurt and I won the race, so it’s quite the memorable moment for me.”