After just two starts in 2016, will O'Brien Award winner Daylon Magician return to the races? Trot Insider touched base with Dave Lemon, co-owner of the near-double millionaire.
"We've got him turned out," said Lemon from his winter base in Florida. "He hurt his ankle, so he was with Jack [Moiseyev] for about six or seven months. They brought him back and the ankle flared up again. So we took him home and he's been just turned out."
Lemon said the injury came to light near the end of Daylon Magician's seven-year-old season in 2015.
"We thought if we gave him four or five months he'd be alright. But when Jack brought him back, he had one race and it went again. So I said I'll take him home and turn him out.
"I checked him after a while and he isn't healed up right yet...as time goes by it seems less likely he'll get back."
That choice of words from Lemon -- "less likely" -- indicates he hasn't thrown in the towel on a return to the races for his homebred just yet. However, Lemon will only consider racing Daylon Magician at the top classes. After a career that has spanned six seasons and 81 starts, Daylon Magician has raced in provincial or open stakes events for every start save a handful. He started his sophomore campaign in 2011 with wins in 11 of his first 13 starts, including the elimination and final of the $1 million Canadian Trotting Classic.
The three-year-old campaign of Daylon Magician ended with a 11-2-3 summary from 17 starts and $1.068 million in earnings. He was an obvious and overwhelmingly popular choice as Canada's Three-Year-Old Trotting Colt of the Year at the 2011 O'Brien Awards.
After a few attempts to stand the horse commercially as a stallion didn't pan out due to fertility issues, Daylon Magician returned to the track as an aged competitor. He averaged $234,000 per season in his four-, six- and seven-year-old campaigns, with his biggest win as an older horse coming in the 2015 Cleveland Trotting Classic.
For now, Lemon is content to allow his homebred star to live a life of leisure on his Komoka, Ont, area farm.
"I built him a little place in the downstairs of our barn," said Lemon, "and he's got about a three-acre paddock there that he's in. He likes it there and the yearling colts are beside him in the next paddock and gets along with them good.
"He's just like a big pet. Kids can go in and play with him...he always was like that."
Recognizing the horse's fertility isn't at a level of commercial viability, Lemon does get inquiries from interested parties still looking to breed mares to the son of Kadabra - Daylon Marvel.
"Last year [Jack and Joanne Colville] bred a few mares to him," stated Lemon. "I don't know how many they got in foal, I think they bred six or seven mares."
With only six registered 2014 foals -- 2016 two-year-olds -- Daylon Magician sired three starters including stakes winner Scene A Magician and stakes-placed One Of The Few.
"We might just turn out some mares with him, two or three mares and just put them out with him, see if we get a colt. I haven't got into that yet."
Why hasn't Lemon bred his own mares to Daylon Magician? Pedigree. The longtime operator of Daylon Farms along with his wife Mary solely owns mares that are from Daylon Magician's maternal family or sired by Kadabra. He currently owns pieces of three fillies in training with Wayne Henry in Florida while he's managing the development of a two-year-old full-brother to Daylon Magician, Daylon Phantom.
And while Lemon is certainly optimistic on the potential of his two-year-old pupil at this point, he's experienced enough to know how fortunate and special the career of Daylon Magician was and hasn't taken it for granted in the slightest. He remarked how he was surprised on the number of people that were genuinely happy for the success he and Mary had with their trotting star.
"For me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing... It's like winning the lottery," said Lemon. "We put in our time but we're still lucky to be the one that got picked."