After four decades of plying his trade in the game, Alex ‘Trapper’ MacQuarrie is calling it a career.
The 72-year-old native of Inverness, Nova Scotia, who is a legend in the eyes of many maritime horsepeople, recently decided it was time to hang up his colours.
“I enjoyed every minute of it,” said the uncle of Ontario-based horseman Mark MacQuarrie who made his final driving appearances last Saturday at Northside Downs. “I had a good career. I’m coming up to 73 years old and you don’t bounce back anymore if something happens.”
That afternoon program at the half-mile oval turned out to be a miserable day in one sense, but it will go down as a memorable one for the veteran horseman.
“I wanted to see a few of the boys at the track,” MacQuarrie told the Chronicle Herald. “I wanted to have one final card there because of how good everyone there has been to me over my career. My wife had put the uniform away, but told me to go and enjoy it, but I picked an awful day to go weather-wise.”
MacQuarrie was privileged to work alongside a number of top tier horsepeople during his career including veterans like Danny Hector MacEachern, Archie MacDonald and Kenny MacDonald. Over his 43-year career, MacQuarrie has posted 1,245 victories, 1,224 second-place finishes and 1,182 third-place finishes with lifetime earnings of $615,560. As a trainer, MacQuarrie had 1,266 starts, 213 wins, 213 second-place finishes and 196 third-place finishes for earnings of $139,886.
The sporting world has heard the word ‘retirement’ many times only to see a return to the game at some point down the road. Will that apply to MacQuarrie? Not if he knows what’s good for him says the cagey veteran.
“A lot of people have said they know I’ll be back, but I keep telling them to ask my wife,” laughed MacQuarrie. “She just took the uniform from Saturday and told me that when she gets the dirt off it that I was never going to find it because she’s going to hide it.”
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