Harness The Hope Close To Junquist Family

While it’s a good idea to go online to check the odds for Fraser Downs races, the concept of checking the Internet for odds in general is not always a good idea. Mary Junquist -- husband of Dave and mother of James, both drivers at the track -- knows that first-hand

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Mary is a breast cancer survivor, and those are the odds she sought.

“I just wanted to know,” she says, “and it’s the worst thing you can do. There are more questions than answers. The doctors say don’t go online because they are just percentages and you’re not a percentage, you’re one person.”

Coincidentally, in the Powder Puff Pace on tonight’s card at Fraser Downs, a fundraiser for breast cancer, there are no odds. It’s a non-betting race. The drivers are women from the track – grooms, assistant trainers, track workers. The event takes place between the seventh and eighth races.

Harness The Hope is in its fourth year at the Downs, and the “powder puff” race annually raises about $10,000 to support breast cancer research.

Sixteen months ago, Mary Junquist was helping her husband and son in the barns cleaning the stalls, bathing and talking to the horses. Then she got the news nobody wants to hear. Her battle began with surgery, then chemo and radiation.

“I had the whole nine yards – surgery, chemo, radiation,” she remembers, “and I’ve been bald and fat. It was a tough road, but it’s almost harder to be the person watching. I had to stay positive to keep my husband and son from being depressed. They worried desperately. While it was hard for me to be at home, they’d have a tough day at the track and then they had to come home, and there I was.”

Mary knows she is not the only woman connected to Fraser Downs fighting breast cancer, and that makes this year’s Powder Puff Pace even more emotional. It’s especially emotional for her, because just two weeks ago she got the news everyone wants to hear: She is cancer-free.

Now that she is, Mary wants to be there for others, the way driver Tim Brown’s mother Joan was there for her.

“She was the first person I went to, and she was very helpful, even though it wasn’t breast cancer that she had,” says Mary. “She does cancer counseling. If somebody has it and doesn’t want to talk about it, I understand. There were days when I felt like that, but now I think if somebody gets checked because they know about me, maybe it can help. There are at least two of us right now, and there were others who have come out on the right side.”

Now that she has come out on the right side, her return to Fraser Downs is next -- possibly tomorrow.

“This race is a wonderful thing,” she adds. “The more attention it brings to any cancer, the better.”

In this race, odds don’t matter.

(Fraser Downs)