The Sunday evening program at Rideau Carleton Raceway had a little bit of everything – a milestone, a solid feature race and a trainer/driver team that was firing
on all cylinders.
Driver Stephane Gendron celebrated the 3,000th win of his career thanks to a score behind Tropical Luck in Race 13. The career winner of $9.3 million in purse earnings rallied the Jamie Copley trainee to the 1:55.3 triumph en route to securing the milestone.
Gendron enjoyed the biggest single season purse haul of his career in 2008 when hit total surpassed $966,000. He’s on the verge of climbing to the $700,000 mark in season earnings this year.
The Sunday evening feature race – the $12,100 Preferred – went to Imjustalittleguy and trainer/driver Ted McDonald. The seven-year-old son of Armbro Operativ did most of the road work en route to posting the career-best clocking of 1:53.1 over race favourite Best Show In Town and Bolero Trisco.
It was his eighth win of the campaign, and the 31st of his career. The lion’s share of the purse bumped his lifetime earnings to $244,701 for the partnership of Lloyd Stone of Portland and Dr. John Tobin of Elgin, ON.
Trainer Sebastien Giroux and driver John MacDonald joined forces to win three races on the 15-race card. Pretty Kadabra (1:59.2), Match Bayama (1:53.1) and Winston Image (1:55) did the winning for the dynamic duo.
MacDonald added a pair of catch-driving scores to bring his nightly win total to five. He clicked with the Daniel Quinn-trained Stormont O My (1:58) and the Richard Hebert-conditioned Rosies Grin (1:56.2).
To view Sunday’s harness racing results, click here.