Chris Matthews, a Standardbred trainer in the game for more than 30 years and the right-hand man to a top conditioner in Gregg McNair, will have his turn in the limelight on Saturday, Sept. 26 when his freshman trotter D A Johnny Cash hits the track to try and play the role of spoiler in the Grade 1 Mohawk Million at Woodbine Mohawk Park.
“If you told us four or five months ago we were going to be in this race, I would’ve never believed you,” said Matthews, who found a berth into the richest trotting race for two-year-olds with a once unsuspecting horse from a barn of just a handful he trains himself. “I’ve been blessed. This is a big thrill for me and my partners.”
Matthews bought D A Johnny Cash – a son of 2019 Canadian Trotting Classic winner Green Manalishi S out of the unraced Royalty For Life mare Mabel Kipp – for $50,000 from the 2025 London Classic Yearling Sale with his partners, Todd Williams of Guelph, Ant., and Jeff Bryan of Amaranth, Ont. But Matthews struggled to get the trotter to train and suspected that he’d need treatment for Equine Protozoal Myeloecnephalitis (EPM), which resulted in Matthews and his team deciding to forego any stakes payments for the two-year-old season.
“His future didn’t look that bright in March,” said Matthews. “I just couldn’t get him to trot a mile. Seemed like he was lame, he just couldn’t put it together. He hadn’t trained a mile at all; a complete mile. I was playing with some equipment and shoeing and stuff, but I couldn’t get him right. I said to the boys, ‘Let’s give him some time.’ He was a stud still, so we might as well geld him – just easier to turn them out when they’re gelded. I got thinking when I gelded him, well, there’s a possibility he might have EPM, so maybe I’ll just treat him because usually when they get stressed out a little bit then it comes out of them. And when you geld them, there’s two weeks before you start training him, so I just started him on daily medication.
“I was playing with him, jogging him because I couldn’t train. I said to one of my owners that helps me in the barn, he’s retired, ‘Gee, I think this colt’s getting a little better. I think I’m going to put a watch on him.’ Because I’d play with him the right way and the wrong way, whatever. I put a watch on him and the first time he trained a mile, he went a mile in [2:]38. That was about the end of March, and that was the first time he went a complete mile without making a break. After that, away he went. That was it.”
D A Johnny Cash qualified on June 27 in rein to Matthews and just sat towards the back of the field to finish sixth by 14-1/2 lengths but trotted a 2:02.3 mile with a :27 final quarter that had Matthews, in his words, zigzagging through the stretch as he kept the gelding under a hold. Matthews opted to steer him in his pari-mutuel debut because the gelding was still green, and despite breaking stride in that foray, he knew the horse was ready to be paired with Doug McNair, who drove him to a 1:56.3 victory in his next start on the lead in an Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots division.
“I didn’t get to train him with a lot of horses and he was having a little trouble with horses crossing over in front of him,” said Matthews. “The first time I qualified him, he was interfering a little bit behind, so I made a little shoeing change for that first start. Of course, he drew the rail, the worst spot he could’ve drawn. I just took a little hold of him and just made a green break, came back trotting and caught the field and came back on for a fifth. The way he trotted after, I thought he was ready for Doug. I told Doug, ‘Just put him on the front. If he’s on the front, you’re not going to have any issues; it’s going to be game over.’ He’s gotten a lot better, a lot more mature.”
From his win in the Grassroots, Matthews moved D A Johnny Cash to the Gold level and didn’t lose faith when the gelding broke in his next two starts. On the last turn of his race on July 24, D A Johnny Cash grabbed a shoe and jumped off stride as McNair tried to accelerate towards the leader. In his next start on Aug. 14, he rolled off stride for driver Bob McClure when caught in tight quarters leaving the gate.
“The night he grabbed a shoe, Dougie thought he was going to win that race,” said Matthews. "Then he made the break with Bobby. Different driver, different race bike. If I look back, I may have had the hopples a tad too long. He pushed off the gate, Bobby wanted him to drift – he likes to drift a little bit when he guns out of there – but he was sort of pinned and had to correct him and made a break. Bobby told me after, ‘Listen, don’t change nothing. He trotted perfectly after. He feels like a nice colt.’ Just greenness, one of those things. And he never had to leave that hard before. Just happens.”
Reunited with McNair in his next start, D A Johnny Cash came back to the races on Aug. 20 and trotted a lifetime-best 1:53.2 mile on the lead to win in a $25,000 two-year-old overnight race. That victory, which also spurred talks of making a deal to land the gelding into the Mohawk Million, made him the 6-5 favourite in his return to the Gold level against Detonater Hanover, who had finished fourth in the Grade 1 William Wellwood after winning in one of the eliminations. On advice from Doug McNair, Matthews decided to put an open bridle on D A Johnny Cash while McNair gave the gelding a more methodical drive to finish second, beaten a neck from off the speed.
“[Doug] said, ‘I’m worried he’s getting a little too racy,’ so when we went into the race with 'Detonater,' I switched his bridle,” explained Matthews. “He said, ‘We’re not leaving tonight. Whatever happens, happens. I just want to race him off a helmet and see what happens.’ Detonater got a nice half and we trotted pretty good home; he trotted with him. We were happier with him with that start than with any of his other starts, to be honest.”
Through the month of September, and with the unfortunate withdrawal from consideration of another local star in Unstable Genius due to a suspensory injury, Matthews eventually worked a deal to race in the slot of entrepreneur Sam Stathis’s Celebrity Farms since the gelding continued racing on a formful upswing leading into the Mohawk Million.
“I knew when he won in [1:]53 that he was well within himself [and] I thought there was potential there that we might be in the conversation,” said Matthews. “And unfortunately, one of the top colts went down [with an injury], Dave Menary’s colt [Unstable Genius]. The way my colt raced in the last Gold, I had gotten a call after he won in [1:]53 and [they said], ‘Well, we need him to be a little more consistent, staying on his gait.’ So I said, ‘Let’s see how he does in the next Gold’ and Dougie said he was perfect. I was pretty confident that we could compete with a little higher group. It was just a matter of if we could get a spot or not and we were open to offers.”
McNair will drive D A Johnny Cash, listed as a longshot on the morning line at 12-1 out of post eight, in the Grade 1 Mohawk Million, carded as race 10 on the 13-race stakes card. The contentious group includes four fillies in Peaceful Way Stakes champion Athenas Girl, Dataprivacy, Kissme Ifyoucan and Nevis Peak as well as the William Wellwood Memorial champ Ocean Storm and the Jim Campbell-trained speedy colt Wrong Sounds Right, who ships north off a 1:51.4 victory at The Meadowlands and, according to owner/breeder Scott Farber after the New Jersey Classic win, is “the best two-year-old in America right now.”
“Jim Campbell’s horse drew a very nice post, the five-hole, but everybody else have credentials,” said Matthews. “I think my colt’s versatile. He qualified super. He was well within hand. And the filly that was in against him, she has some credentials – Determination’s filly [Dataprivacy] – he stepped away from her pretty handily. Dougie can drive him any way he wants. I think the way the draw set up, nobody knows for sure how it will set up for the race. I’m not too worried about it. We’ve left the open [bridle] on him. He’s still a little green but he took to it pretty good. Dougie said he was absolutely perfect with the open the last two trips. Everything will stay the same and we’ll go for it.”
The Mohawk Million will also be Matthews' first appearance in a major stakes race since a decade ago when he reached the 2016 Fan Hanover final with his pacing filly Lay Lady Lay, who broke stride and finished last but went on to race until the age of six and earned nearly half a million dollars.
“I’ve had a lot go wrong the last couple of years,” Matthews said with a laugh, “but it’s nice to see things have worked out to get to this point with this colt. It took a long time to get to one of these races, but that’s been probably 10 years since that’s happened. It took that long to get back to this point again, so you’ve got to enjoy the moments while you can.”
(Woodbine)