When Joe Faucher envisions the future, he pictures big things. As he takes the helm at the Quebec Jockey Club, the optimistic leader is intent on taking horse racing in the province to new levels. By Paul Delean
Jocelyn (Joe) Faucher has always been a scrapper. It was his role when he played junior hockey for the Quebec Remparts, amassing a league-leading 305 penalty minutes one season, playing against the likes of Ray Bourque and Denis Savard. It`s what enabled him to overcome a lack of formal education - “I have only Grade 9” - to own several businesses and hold down a variety of jobs, the most challenging of which may be the latest one: general manager of the Quebec Jockey Club.
The October announcement that Faucher would succeed Vincent Trudel at the helm of the QJC took many by surprise, but his passion for harness racing has never been a secret.
He`s been involved in the sport in Quebec for more than three décades, starting with a stint as public relations director at Hippodrome de Quebec in Quebec City in the early 1980s.
He`s owned horses, used to chauffeur hall-of-fame horseman Yves Filion between tracks during the summer, and even managed Bayama Farm and its stallions for Filion in its heyday after the syndication of millionaire pacer Runnymede Lobell in the early 1990s.
Faucher operated (briefly) a bilingual horseracing publication, Harness World - Le Monde du Harnais, and at one point was a sales rep for a grain company, selling to horse farms throughout Quebec and New York.
He was one of the original organizers and backers of the Quebec Jockey Club and played a key role, through his network of contacts in Quebec City, in obtaining legislative changes that reduced pari-mutuel taxes and allowed the QJC to be licenced for racing and set up 10 off-track betting parlors in the province in the aftermath of the Attractions Hippiques bankruptcy that felled the industry in Quebec nine years ago.
“Jocelyn is a good man,” said Filion, who has known him for decades. “He knows a lot of people, he has contacts everywhere, including government, and he`s a go-getter. He`ll always go the extra mile. I believe he can help the industry. I know for sure that he`ll work at it.”
Brian Paquet, a prominent racehorse owner and QJC director, said Faucher has shown he knows how to keep costs in line and make businesses viable.
“He`s a man on a mission, hell-bent on improving the industry and getting it the money to start breathing again,” Paquet said. “His education is from the street but it doesn`t make any difference as long as the job gets done. And he has gotten wiser and cagier over time. He`s persistent, has a wonderful memory and will try anything. He`s not shy, either, about giving you his ideas. We were hearing from him even when he wasn`t part of the QJC.”
Claude Levesque, chairman of QJC, said Faucher`s fresh ideas and enthusiasm won over the board. “He`s colorful, and a man of his word. And he really wants to make this happen.”
Faucher said the non-profit corporation has laid the foundations for an industry revival in Quebec. Now it`s time to take it to the next level - ‘phase three’, he calls it.
`Phase one’ was getting the permit to start again at Hippodrome de Québec (in 2010). ‘Phase two’ was buying the track at Trois-Rivieres (in 2012). Now, we`ve got to boost the (annual) handle beyond the current $76 million and get purses up to $3 million a year (from about $2.6 million in 2016).
Faucher will be seeking regulatory amendments from the province that would allow the QJC to open as many as 20 mini betting parlors in bars and restaurants across the province to supplement the 10 full-sized parlors operating now. He`s also seeking to introduce new forms of wagering, possibly including bets on horses that don`t hit the board, and wants Quebec to authorize the use of Lasix, which would make shipping horses from outside jurisdictions more attractive.
During its 2017 season, Hippodrome Trois-Rivieres will have a 50-50 draw during every live program, with the proceeds going to boost purses. The 50-50 tickets are a way of engaging visitors who may not actually be betting on the races - some spouses, for instance. “We might be able to generate another $100,000 for purses this year, just from that,” Faucher said.
He saw racing thrive in Quebec, then falter and almost disappear, but he has never lost faith in its capacity to engage and entertain people.
“Ìt`s like bowling,” said Faucher. “When I got into it that business about 20 years ago, people said it was only for old people, and on the way out. Guess what. It`s still going. I own a 48-lane alley in Quebec City and we get 6,000 visitors a week, ages 2 to 92.”
The son of a contractor from Gatineau, Quebec, Faucher first got interested in racing visiting Connaught Park racetrack in Aylmer, in his teens, while delivering beer for the Labatt brewery.
When he moved to Quebec City to play hockey at 16, the Remparts made occasional visits to Hippodrome de Québec as a team..
“The first summer after I quit playing junior, the Remparts` marketing guy quit and they called me in Gatineau and offered me a job selling season tickets. I sold 1,100. Nobody expected that. They ended up offering me the job full-time. I may have been the first guy to go directly from junior into another job with the team. Turns out I was good at sales and promotion.”
Faucher stayed three years. He likely would have remained with the team but its days in the city were numbered. The Quebec Nordiques had entered the NHL in 1979 and the local market wasn`t big enough for both of them. The junior franchise was urged to relocate (eventually moving to Longueuil).
“They told me if you can find something else, it might be best, because they couldn`t guarantee a future,” Faucher said. “What you do in Quebec City, if you`re looking for work, is you start to visit the local bars.”
At his first stop, somebody mentioned him to that the public relations director at Hippodrome de Quebec had just quit.
“I didn`t know much about racing, really, but I wanted to learn,” he said. “They wanted someone who could make the sport more visible in the community and I had my hockey contacts. They hired me right away. I didn`t miss a day of work. And I went to tracks all over the place to see how things were done.”
An event that stayed with him was the International Trot at Roosevelt Raceway in 1983. “They cut the lights and had the horses come out for their introductions under a spotlight. It was so impressive.”
Faucher borrowed the idea for the first Grand Prix de Quebec, a $25,000 invitation race at Hippodrome de Quebec won by Saturn Lobell and driver Carman Hie in 1983.
“We rented a spotlight and everything. What I didn`t know,” he recalled with a chuckle, “is that if we cut the lights at the track, it was going to take 25 minutes for them to come back to full brightness. The horses had to return to the paddock. It was a good race anyway, and we bet something like $345,000.”
His efforts at Hippodrome de Quebec did not go unnoticed, and in 1985 Faucher was invited to join the public relations department at Blue Bonnets Raceway in Montreal.
He lasted six months.
“My vision of racing wasn`t the same as the managers there,” he said. “It was too much a change from what they were used to. I remember (prominent owner and breeder) Lucien Paiement telling me at one point that if I really wanted to change things up, I`d have to buy my own track.”
Which he almost did, in the early 1990s. Faucher, Filion and Levesque made a bid together for Connaught Park, then under the direction of Pilar Gorman.
“We actually signed the papers,” he said. “But in Quebec, there`s a waiting period after the signatures and my lawyer called at 6:30 the next morning to say Mrs. Gorman had reconsidered and the deal was off.”
Gorman subsequently offered both Faucher and Levesque jobs with the track, but they left after two days when it became obvious they weren`t a good fit with her management style. Soon after, the track went under.
It was after the ill-fated Connaught adventure that Faucher discovered bowling.
“Claude Levesque`s brother had a bowling alley in Bedford and he said you should look into it. Same thing as with racing, I wanted to learn as much as I could. With my wife Marie-Claude and my son Alexandre, we went all over the place to see how it was done elsewhere. I visited every Canadian province and 22 states. I think I saw 200 bowling alleys.”
He opened his first one in 1997 in Lachute, Quebec, in partnership with Filion, then two others at Mont Sainte-Anne and in downtown Quebec City. He has since sold the other two and kept the Quebec City operation, Quillorama Frontenac, which is still going strong.
Along the way, he also spent three years assisting Alexandre, now 25, in getting a scrap-metal business off the ground.
“His company`s going well now, which is why I told him in September it was time for me to step away and do something different. I didn`t know what at the time. But I did have a plan in my head for the Jockey Club, which I shared with most directors. I told them, if you like it, give me a two-year mandate. And if you don`t, no problem.”
He`s given himself two years to make his mark at the QJC, which he said was left in excellent shape by former chairman Tony Infilise and Trudel, “which whom I have a really good relationship. I was one of those who recommended Vincent for the job.”
“The track in Trois-Rivieres was bought for $4 million. Only $1.8 million is still owed. That`s significant. The regional circuit has been strengthened. That`s where you develop young talent, people like Louis-Philippe Roy (leading driver in 2016 at Rideau Carleton Raceway). It`s like with hockey. You need a good junior league. There`s also been major improvements in breeding. I remember telling Yves Filion, back in the days when the Coupe des Eleveurs finals (for Quebec-breds) were going for $300,000, that it wouldn`t be possible for the game to continue the way it was. We were too focused on Quebec-breds, which had little residual value when the stakes were done.”
“What the QJC has done is tell owners to breed to the stallions they want, produce the best horses they can, and we`ll give you a place where they can get started, develop or be freshened. You see the results now, with horses like The Real One (a Yonkers-based winner of more than $700,000) and Yaris Bayama (winner of the 2016 Ontario Sires Stakes Super Final for two-year-old pacing fillies). We`ve got good horsemen in Quebec. We can be the AHL of harness racing. But it`s like any business. If you don`t renew yourself, you start to go backward. And we have to focus more on the fans. That`s why we`re adding $8,000 invitations every program this year at H3R, to give our fans and bettors more quality, something that can be exported. In 2017, the most important person for the QJC is the bettor, male and female. People haven`t thought of them for 25 years, but they`re the one keeping us alive.”
Faucher is 56, the age at which his father Rheal died (after a horse fell on him at the ranch which had been his life`s dream), and he`s keen on contributing to a sport that has captivated and inspired him for decades.
“Horse racing, like hockey, has been very good to me,” he said. “I want to see it prosper. I think I`m the right guy for the job because for 30 years, it always seemed my vision was not of its time, and now I`ve got a board of directors that endorses it. I`m more awkward and unstructured than someone with more education, and my one regret in life is that I didn`t go farther in school. But I think my track record speaks for itself. I`ve done the university of life. I`ve also done just about every job you can do in racing, and with that to draw on, I`d like to leave a lasting legacy for the sport.”
