As Trot Insider reported earlier this week, on Friday, July 31 at Mohawk Racetrack Warrawee Flare will take her place behind the starting gate for the 193rd and final time of
her racing career. The mare likely doesn’t know it will be her final performance, but her caregivers do, and there likely won’t be a dry eye in the house.
In her four years under the care of trainer Darren McCall, the eight-year-old has seldom disappointed. The daughter of Northern Luck, out of the Artsplace mare Light Up, has recorded 40 career victories, 16 second-place finishes and 13 thirds. The mare has earned $607,969 overall without ever having stepped outside Ontario’s borders. Since 2005, the mare has seldom missed a week’s racing, with the vast majority of her starts on the Woodbine Entertainment Group circuit.
“She’s my favourite horse in the barn,” says McCall. “She just has a good way about her. She pretends to be big and tough, but she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. She’s got one of those eyes with the white around it, and she’ll pin her ears at you, but she’s really a sweetheart. All the grooms love her, too.
“She gets treated like a queen, and she absolutely loves it.”
McCall first spotted Warrawee Flare at Standardbred Canada’s 2005 Spring Fling Mixed Sale, where the mare was consigned as a four-year-old by the Break N Run Racing Stable. “I was kind of determined to get her,” he recalls. “She looked like she was quick on her feet, but her lines showed she wasn’t finishing well. I thought I could get her to close with a few changes to her program.”
A $41,000 bid sealed the deal, and, with a few equipment alterations, McCall found he did indeed have a race mare on his hands. “Each year, she got quicker and quicker. She set her lifetime mark last year when she was seven – 1:50.3. She’s well-bred and slick-gaited, and she’s got absolutely brilliant speed in a sprint. Over an eighth of a mile I can’t think of a horse who could beat her.
“She has shown up, week in, week out, in front or from the back, it doesn’t matter to her. She would always let you know when she was ready to win. She really is the most honest horse I’ve ever put a bridle on.
“An amazing old girl, she is. She has never let me down.”
Richard Jack and the Stake Your Claim Stable of Secaucus, New Jersey hold the papers on Warrawee Flare. McCall says, “No trainer looks forward to making that dreaded phone call to the owners to tell them their horses have raced poorly that week. ‘Flare’ has come to the rescue so many times – even when their other horses have been disappointing, I’ve been able to say that she raced like a champ!
“I’d race her forever, if I could, but her best days are behind her now. It took her a while to get that 40th win (which Warrawee Flare nonetheless delivered on July 3 at Mohawk, defeating Trace Of Luck and Guestimate by one and a quarter lengths in 1:53.2).
“There’s no one big problem forcing her retirement,” he adds, “other than she’s been battling quarter cracks this past winter. She’s just telling me it’s time. She’s not as sharp as she has been, it’s as simple as that.
“I think the best part of her career was early in 2008 – when she set that 1:50.3 mark (April 26, 2008 at Woodbine, in a $17,000 condition race), that sticks out in my mind as one of her finest hours.
“Now I just want to see her go out on a good note.”
Warrawee Flare may have missed the 2009 breeding season here in Canada, but her retirement will be just in time where she’s going. McCall intends to put the mare on a plane headed down under, where the Southern-Hemisphere breeding farms are just getting geared up. “She’ll have to spend two weeks in quarantine here and another two weeks in Australia, so we’ll miss the season if we wait much longer.
“I would like to breed her to Art Major,” he says, “but it hasn’t been decided yet. But we do know she’ll always have a good home there.
“She deserves it, that’s for sure.”
Warrawee Flare will be honoured with a cooler presentation at Mohawk following her final race on Friday night (Race #8, post time 9:50 p.m.), and she will be on hand at Mohawk’s front entrance on Saturday night, August 1, to visit one last time with her many fans, before she boards a plane for her next great adventure.
Please take the opportunity to stop by and pay your respects to one of WEG’s most consistent warrior queens, with a carrot.
(With files from WEG)