For the past 25 years, a select group of Canada’s top horses and people have been honoured with the sport’s most prestigious award – the O’Brien. This year, we pay tribute to the winners who have stood boldly at the top of the podium, and reveal your picks for the O’Brien Dream Team.
This week we profile Two-Year-Old Trotting Colt A Worthy Lad. Thirty times A Worthy Lad went to the gate and 30 times he went to the winner’s circle. A Worthy Lad raced everywhere in Ontario, won 24 stakes —- including the country’s premier stakes race for sophomores, the Canadian Trotting Classic —- and delivered a spotless record. Not once did he break stride, get nipped at the wire or fail to fire in the lane. A perfect, and still unmatched, record. Even the great pacer Somebeachsomewhere was nipped at the wire in one of his otherwise-perfect 21 starts.
“All I know is that I won every trip that I sat behind him and that’s pretty rare,” said trainer-driver Bud Fritz.
If the swan song to his two-year-old campaign —- where he won 17 in a row and was named Canada’s top freshman trotter at the O’Brien Awards —- was a show stopper, A Worthy Lad proved that there was more where that came from at three. He won another O’Brien Award thanks to 13 more wins in as many starts, the sweetest coming in the Canadian Trotting Classic at Greenwood Raceway in Toronto, where he finally had the chance to test —- and beat —- a few highly-touted U.S. invaders.
Dream Team Voting - Two-Year-Old Trotting Colt
1. A Worthy Lad - 20.3 %
2. Wheeling N Dealin - 16.6 %
3. Conway Hall - 11.6 %
Be sure to check out the full O'Brien Dream Team in the January issue of Trot Magazine.
(Video courtesy WEG; with files from the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame)