THE FASCINATOR:
(Santanna Blue Chip - Aquatic Lightning) p,2:00.3h -’16 ($30,282) 299 - 16 - 29 - 49
OWNER / TRAINER: John Ellsworth | BREEDER: Louis McIsaac
By Melissa Keith. Adapted by Dan Fisher.
When someone loses a horse - through tragedy or other - the best remedy tends to be the acquisition of another. That has been the case for retired police officer John Ellsworth, and it’s what eventually led him to his 14-year-old mare, The Fascinator.
“We bought her from Chuckie Symes,” said the Dominion, Nova Scotia horseman. “She was originally from PEI. She raced at Charlottetown and Summerside, and she raced a bit in Bangor [in late 2014]. My young fella picked her out. We brought her home [in 2015], with another horse, when she was four.”
The interview was momentarily interrupted by the unmistakable sound of hooves striking a stall door. Ellsworth laughed, adding, “She knows we’re talking about her!” He had been hanging some battery-operated Christmas lights around the house and barn, and The Fascinator obviously wanted his undivided attention.
The attention of The Fascinator’s stablemate was no replacement for that of her owner/trainer/driver. “There’s another mare in there too, a three-year-old, named Skie Lo Lo. They just look at each other,” explained Ellsworth, adding that the two are not pasture buddies: “I don’t want to take the chance.”
This year, The Fascinator was the only 14-year-old honoured with a retirement ceremony on closing day 2025 at Northside Downs in North Sydney. “She’s doing good. Whenever I can, I get her out in the field. She loves it. She just runs and runs and runs. When it’s time to come in, it’s maybe a carrot, or half a bag of carrots, before she comes in,” he laughed. After all these years, bribery with carrots is also the best way to get the mare on a trailer, he noted.
The spirited pacer almost always brought that same energy to the races as well. “She would bounce and carry-on a bit when she was out on the track, maybe even lift her rear end a little,” said Ellsworth, who was The Fascinator’s regular driver, a duty that he also entrusted Adam Lynk with a couple dozen times over the years as well. “She’s got a good mentality. On race day, if she was bouncy and kicky, she’d race good.”
The Fascinator’s most recent win for Ellsworth, came on the front end at Northside Downs, on May 25, 2024, where she returned $37.10 to Win. With 16 career victories and $30,282 earned, in 299 starts, she was the kind of mare who probably could have earned more elsewhere, but stayed in Cape Breton with her human family.
In originally selecting The Fascinator to buy, Ellsworth said his son Riley found lots to like. “He picked her out. He liked her size, her grit and how she raced.
With The Fascinator stabled in the barn behind their house, eventually, Riley Ellsworth wanted to get licensed as a trainer and driver, like his dad, while he was living at the family home in Cape Breton. His father, however, had other ideas.
“[Riley] is in university in PEI right now. He goes to the racetrack day-in, day-out, after classes though,” John told TROT. “That’s the deal we decided on: Go to university and get your [Political Science] degree. He finishes his third year in December… and he’ll be totally finished in December 2026.”
After graduation, Riley has his father’s endorsement to pursue his harness racing dream. John said he wanted Riley to “put it on hold” and get a post-secondary education first. “He wanted to go get them [his licenses] before that. He was 20 [years-old] when he went to university. I was kind of glad; I thought that originally he was going to be a policeman.”
John Ellsworth has had his share of stress from his demanding former career. “I’ve been retired from the force for 12 years. I started my career policing Dominion, and after municipalization, I finished with the Cape Breton Regional Police Service,” he said.
While The Fascinator is “occasionally cranky”, Ellsworth called the mare “a treat to work with” and a special companion. “If you want to call her a therapy horse, go right ahead,” he added with a chuckle.
As long as he and his wife Sandra are looking after The Fascinator on their home farm, it’s also simply the continuation of a timeless regional and family tradition.
“My father had horses with my uncle Joe in the ‘60s,” recalled John. “I’d hitchhike to Tartan Downs in Sydney - it was probably the Cape Breton Sports Centre then. I started driving around ‘84 and I enjoy it a lot.”
The Dominion horseman remembered an earlier pacer who may have been his best. “I had a little horse by the name of JM Buddy [p, 2:00.1h; $30,881]. He was only a yearling when I got him - me and my father, Richard. That was quite a few years ago. [JM Buddy] was built like a tank,” remembered John fondly.
John shared that he also had two other horses at the time - one was JM Buddy’s half-sister Paying In Person (p, 2:01.1h; $21,425), a mare his wife Sandra wanted to keep. “Charlie MacDonald, Marc Campbell’s grandfather, sold me those two,” he added.
There was also Riverside Ben (p,3, 2:05.3h; $2,328), a $1,600 purchase from the 2003 Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition (NSPE) Yearling Sale at Truro.
In 2006, however, tragedy struck. An electrical fire consumed the old barn on the family property, and the three horses - Riverside Ben, Paying In Person and JM Buddy - perished. Lexus Gracie, in 2006, and eventually, The Fascinator, in 2015, were purchased to fill the void created by the loss of the others.
Whether it’s leftover grief from the fire, years of stress from his career as a policeman, or something else, it wasn’t just racing her at Northside Downs and Inverness Raceway that made The Fascinator an unofficial - or maybe now official - therapy horse for Ellsworth either. And it sure wasn’t about the money, when over the past 11 years her largest season-ending bankroll has been $2,557. No, for true horsemen like John Ellsworth there’s more to it.
It’s simply a way of life.
“I used to train her on Dominion Beach, before they turned it into a provincial park,” he told TROT. “I trained her at Tartan Downs [after that]. The barns there have been torn down, but people still walk and ride bikes and ATVs on it [the old track], so we trained her and the other new mare there this summer.”
With a housing development imminent for the grounds of the long-defunct Sydney, Nova Scotia racetrack, Ellsworth said he’s gotten creative with alternatives. “I can actually harness her, put her in the cart and just go up the road with her,” he said. “I also use the old [decommissioned] railway system with her when the weather’s good.”
Now though, The Fascinator hasn’t raced since September 20th, at Northside Downs, when she finished fifth for John, and earned the last $88 of her racing career. And she hasn’t been harnessed or jogged since her official retirement at the same track. “Right now, she’s full of piss and vinegar,” he laughed, “so it’s better to just throw her in the field then to try jogging her.”
Ellsworth then shared his memory of his favourite race with her, a 2:00.3 victory at Inverness, by a nose, in 2016, after encountering road trouble on the trip to the racetrack. “That was a good mile at the time around Inverness,” he added.
In terms of the entire experience - having the mare around and racing her over the past 11 years, John explained: “It was very enjoyable to race her, in every way you could think of. She could leave, but other days she’d let the others go and she would catch up and finish second or third anyway.”
He also added that he definitely would not be parting ways with the daughter of Santanna Blue Chip - Aquatic Lightning, who has proven her durability by averaging 23 starts per year over her 13-year career.
With her tenacity, her soundness, and her connection to the family, and with John and Sandra having a son in university who loves the sport - just like his father and his grandfather before him - comes the possibility of maybe trying to get a little Fascinator to race at Northside and Inverness one day down the road.
“She’s got the body of a 4 or 5-year-old, and she’s well-bred, so we might just breed her one day,” confided John, while also looking forward to Riley’s return for the holidays. “We’re going to decide together. There’s lots of time.”
Yup - they’ll be breeding her!
This piece on The Fascinator is part of the 14YO War Horses published in the December issue of TROT Magazine. Subscribe to TROT today by clicking the banner below.
