With an on-track career that spanned nine seasons and included 218 starts, 43 wins and over $800,000 in earnings, Aahm Canadian Now will start a new career
as a stallion.
Trainer Jerry Sims told Trot Insider that the iron-tough 10-year-old son of Cams Card Shark - Mattventurous has been retired and purchased by Meridian Farm for stud duty in 2010.
"In his last start on May 30, his one ankle was starting to bother him," said Sims. "We gave him a chance at a return around here but the connections decided it would be best to shut him down."
No one would know better than Sims when the time was right for Aahm Canadian Now to transition into his new role. Back in 1999, Sims and Dr. Paul Gatfield selected Aahm Canadian Now as a weanling, cleverly changing his name after purchasing him as Allamerican Macho for $11,500 from Lew Arno and Fred Hertrich (Allamerican Harnessbreds).
To describe Aahm Canadian Now in one word, Sims quickly replied "class. There was never a bad day to be around him. He was such a smart horse, he knew how to take care of himself and he always talked to me when I came in the barn."
Clearly Sims has a special connection with the stallion, and points to the 2004 Des Smith win at Rideau Carleton Raceway as his career highlight when he defeated near double millionaire Peruvian Hanover and a horse that was starting to tear up the Woodbine Open ranks, Admirals Express.
"Actually, there was a funny story connected with that," recalled owner Dr. Paul Gatfield in a Trot feature from October, 2007. "What happened was that two weeks before the Des Smith, he raced very well in Toronto. That's when he took his record of [1]:49.3, and so we thought we should go to the Des Smith. I hadn't paid him up then, so I paid the supplement and the following week was supposed to be elminations for the Des Smith so we entered him in Ottawa.
"It turns out they didn't have enough entries for an elimination, so he didn't have a race that week. We wanted to keep him sharp, so we got him into an Open in Windsor. The Toronto race had already closed by the time we found out we didn't have a race in Ottawa. He got run all over the track in the Open in Windsor and got beat badly. So we thought 'what the devil are we going to the Des Smith for when he can't even win the Open in Windsor?' He was about 10-1 or something like that in the odds so we didn't think we had an awfully good chance down there, and he ended up winning it."
"When he was five and six, he was the best open air horse around," recalled Sims. "He could take more air than anyone."
And while Sims still campaigns free-for-aller Mattscape Seelster, he would say that Aahm Canadian Now is the best horse he's ever been around and prefers to campaign solid, consistent pacers rather than the stakes horses.
"I'll take consistent, dependable horses like [Aahm Canadian Now] and Mattscape Seelster any day."