It’s quite the scene.
Every day after harness trainer Scott McGinn finishes work, he goes home to Stony Plain, Alta. and jogs his one-horse stable star, G TS Skyla, around a six-foot wide path that surrounds a neighbour’s barley field. About a third of a mile in circumference, the makeshift track is harrowed to keep it soft and fluffy.
“Our farm used to be outside of Stony Plain all by itself. But houses have grown up around it and people always smile and wave to me as I’m jogging 'Skyla' and going past them,” said McGinn. “It’s pretty cool. Different but pretty cool. The track is just black dirt but it does the job.”
A winner of nine of her 12 starts and six in a row, G Ts Skyla is looking more impressive every time she races. The unique training regimen is obviously working.
“It’s pretty amazing,” said G Ts Skyla’s driver Logan Gillis. “I always wonder how they keep her in such good shape. I guess that’s how.”
When McGinn wants a fast mile out of G Ts Skyla, he sends her to Jean Francois Gagne’s farm just outside of Wetaskiwin where Gagne has a half-mile track.
A three-year-old filly, G Ts Skyla’s last race was on Aug. 12 at Century Downs in the $101,770 Gord and Illa Rumpel Memorial Stakes, which she won by 4-1/4 lengths in a lifetime mark of 1:53.2 despite being headed at the three-quarter pole by Side Piece.
Gillis, however, wasn’t worried.
“I didn’t ask her for any speed at that point. I knew I had lots left. She’s got another gear when you ask her to go.
“She’s something special. Definitely something very special,” said Gillis.
McGinn thinks so too.
“She’s phenomenal. She gets better every time she comes to the track.”
With no classes to race in except the Open Mares division, GTs Skyla sat idle after the Rumpel victory to this past Sunday when McGinn qualified GTs Skyla at Lacombe’s Track On 2.
It was her first appearance in a month on a track other than her romps around the barley field and his trips to Gagne’s farm. But you’d never know it. She won the qualifier in 1:55.4 with a scintillating last quarter in :27.1.
“And I never even asked her,” said Gillis. “Plus there was a strong head wind. Off a month and she was as good as the day she raced in the Rumpel. Absolutely just as good. It was pretty impressive.
“They’ve done a great job of keeping her happy. And she looks great too. She looks like a really good horse is supposed to look.”
“She’s very big and very strong,” added McGinn. “And she can carry her speed a long way. She doesn’t tire out. She’s determined to win. Just like she showed in the Rumpel. A horse gets beside her and she digs in. She even does that on the farm. She loves to chase the other horses around. It’s fun to watch.”
The Rumpel certainly wasn’t the only stakes G Ts Skyla has won.
She also took the $56,600 Alberta Sires Stakes Marquis final on July 22 at Century Downs.
“Logan sat fifth that day,” said McGinn. “He pulled going into the second turn and had to go three-wide when the horse in front of him stalled out. But she won that one too.”
G Ts Skyla also took the stakes previous to the Marquis, the $90,000 final of the Shirley McClellan Breeders Stakes, despite finishing with broken equipment.
“She dropped a knee boot coming around the far turn,” said McGinn. “But it didn’t slow her down. Logan kept her steady and she wore down the pacesetter, Caviar N Crackers, to win by a length.”
As a two-year-old, G Ts Skyla won two stakes. The first, an Alberta Sires Stakes Starlet division last September, was her career debut. Sent away as the heavy 3-5 favourite, she won that by more than 10 lengths and then took a division of the Brad Gunn Memorial the following week.
The only time G Ts Skyla hasn’t finished first or second was in last year’s Super Finals when she was parked outside the entire mile.
“She pretty well drives herself,” said Gillis, who took over the driving this spring from Brandon Campbell as he had a top three-year-old filly himself. “She does it on her own.”
G Ts Skyla’s only loss this year was on June 9 at Century Downs.
“She was sick for a month,” said McGinn. “That was when heavy smoke rolled in and it seemed like half the backstretch got a virus.
“I had to get a start into her before the McClellan Stakes so I raced her in a condition pace. She hadn’t raced in over a month but she still only got beat by six inches. She had to go first-up on a horse that got away with a slow half. I didn’t know what to expect because she had been off for so long. I thought she raced great considering the circumstances.”
G Ts Skyla isn’t racing this weekend at Edmonton’s Century Mile. Instead she’s being pointed to the Alberta Princess elimination leg on Sept. 23 and then the $50,000 final on Sept. 30.
After that, G Ts Skyla will get ready to contest the $75,000 Filly Pace on Oct. 21, which is the same day as the Western Canada Pacing Derby. Then it will be the Nov. 4 Super Finals.
“She’s got quite the personality,” said McGinn. “She’s very curious. She’s always sticking her head into places she doesn’t belong.
"She’s also very well mannered. She’s a pleasure to be around.”
The McGinns knew they had something special almost from day one.
G Ts Skyla qualified last year on Aug. 27. She finished first by more than eight lengths and then, as mentioned, easily won her career debut two weeks later.
“She showed a lot of potential as a two-year-old,” said McGinn. “Ever since then, she’s been a rock star.”
It’s been a true family story.
McGinn owns G Ts Skyla with his father, Terry, and grandfather and grandmother, Gerald and Marjorie McGinn, who are also the horse’s breeder. G Ts Skyla is a daughter of Mystician, who took a mark of 1:49.2 and won just under $2 million, and out of the As Promised mare, G Ts Selene, an Alberta Super Final champion who the family also owned and bred.
The McGinns also owned G Ts Selene’s dam Enola Gay Mindale, a mare Gerald bought at a mixed sale.
“G Ts Skyla is a third generation horse for us. So that’s pretty cool too,” said McGinn.
Now 87, Gerald was the one who got the McGinns into harness racing.
“Gerald started it,” said McGinn, 28. “He started up the family business, a water well business -- Gerald McGinn Drilling -- just outside of Stony Plain that drills wells and then services them for acreages and farms in 1967. He grew up on a farm and has been around horses all of his life.”
Gerald owned Standardbreds in the mid-1980s and one day, in 1998, he just decided to try training them himself. He just took a chance and it worked out well.
“He was very successful and had quite a few stakes horses,” McGinn said of his grandfather, who won 165 races as a trainer and whose horses won $1.5 million, including G Ts J J, a winner of 20 races and $308,000, and G Ts Jet, a winner of 19 races and $298,722.”
“He would take me to the races when I was just a kid after school, on weekends and then we would spend summer vacations in Calgary and Grande Prairie where he raced,” said McGinn, who also still works for McGinn Drilling as well as being a trainer. “I’m going to step away from the drilling company and transition into full-time training full time in a little while. We’ll see how that goes.
“I’ve been around the track as long as I can remember,” said McGinn, who took out his trainer's license just a few years ago. “I’ve been in love with horses since I started coming to the track when I was very young. Horses have always been in the plan for me I think. It’s a family operation.
"Dad grew up around horses too. He’s been an owner with my grandfather. He never trained horses but he would occasionally get in a jog cart,” said McGinn, whose only other horses are a two-year-old “that is a little behind in training” and a couple of homebred yearlings. “G Ts Skyla is the only horse I’ve got racing. She’s a one-woman show.”
McGinn thinks G Ts Skyla is only going to get better.
“She’ll like the bigger track at Century Mile. She’s a big horse and has good straight line speed. So a mile track is only going to help her. She’ll be able to pick up a lot of speed.”
(Curtis Stock/thehorses.com)