Coming from humble beginnings in Smiths Falls, Ontario, and driving mainly on the Eastern Ontario fair circuit, the late Ross Curran would become a leading driver at Rideau Carleton, Connaught Park, Richelieu Park, and, eventually, on the Ontario Jockey Club tracks as well. He was known as ‘The Cowboy’ due to his ability to handle rambunctious horses, but at times he was a bit of a cowboy away from the horses too. Here we found a handful of Curran’s old friends and family, and asked them to share a few stories about The Cowboy, so our readers would have a chance to get to know him as well. By Chris Lomon.
The lore and legend of the ‘Cowboy’ was forged on racetracks big and small, a horseman with an aptitude for transforming rebellious racehorses into triumphant talents.
“A cowboy is a man with guts and a horse.”
William James’ words elucidate the cowboy’s connection to intrepidity and their loyal horse.
He very well could have been speaking of Ross Curran, the sturdy, square-jawed horseman who earned the moniker ‘Cowboy’ during his life and times on the racetrack.
Whether it was in the sulky or working with a plethora of problematic pacers and trotters, Ross had the Midas touch.
“He was ‘go ahead and move forward’ with everything he did with the horses,” said Al Casselman, a long-time friend and former employee of Ross’. “They respected each other. He always said, ‘Never defeat a horse’s spirit.’ If a horse wanted to go, he let them go.”
It didn’t take long for Curran, a product of Smiths Falls, Ontario, to go places either.
In 1950, at 13, Ross worked with horses under the tutelage of longtime horsemen Sted Craig and Les Ireland at his hometown track. The racing scene back then, a vast majority of it showcased on the Ontario Fair Circuit, was far from glamorous.
Purse money was minimal, the racing season short, and the hours long and demanding.
Even so, Ross was hooked.
Stories of the horseman, never in short supply over the years, state that he started driving at local fairs at the age of 16.
Back then it was a horse by the name of Symbol Allen who helped elevate his status as a rising star in the racebike.
Bred by Piney Grove Farm in North Carolina, the bay gelding and his driver became the darlings of the Eastern Ontario racing scene.
Symbol Allen and Ross were a force at the fairs, teaming together to win multiple races, sometimes taking two or three heats in one afternoon.
Owned by W.L. Ireland, the future Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame pacer (Class of 2000) would win an astonishing 241 races before he was retired at the age of 17.
Ross, too, was on the road to success. But who would have known, at the time, that both horse and driver would end up as hall of famers?
By 1956, a then 19-year-old Ross had become a fixture at racetracks throughout Ontario and Quebec, a list that included Rideau Carleton, Blue Bonnets, Richelieu Park and Connaught Park.
Regular trips to the winner’s circle were the norm.
At 20, Ross took the driving title at Connaught Park. He duplicated the feat in 1964 at Montreal’s Blue Bonnets oval.
Recognition from some of the sport’s top connections soon followed.
John Grant, the man who would eventually own Bettors Delight, and father of current high-profile owner and breeder Brad Grant, handed the reins of some of his top horses to Ross, as did Paul Barkley, Ron Bestine, John Bosworth, Luke Emard, and Duke Yarmaluck.
In 1966, Ross took his talents to the prestigious Ontario Jockey Club ranks, which in those days included Greenwood, Mohawk, and Garden City racetracks.
There, he went stride-for-stride against some of the sport’s biggest stars, names like Ron Feagan, Ron Waples, Keith Waples, and Bill Wellwood. And Ross did more than just hold his own against harness racing’s heavyweight reinsmen.
He was Ontario’s leading dash winner from 1964 to 1973 and boasted an average of .317 over the 10-year period. He was also statistically ranked amongst the top drivers in North America during that era.
“I went to Toronto with him when I was 14,” recalled Rick Curran, Ross’s nephew. “He was one of the best drivers there. He could compete with any of them. He had magic hands and nothing ever seemed to faze him.”
Hector Clouthier, a longtime harness racing industry participant and Canadian politician, remembered the same.
“You might get the most wins over a one year or two year period, but this guy did it for 10 years against top competition. Wow.”
Garth Gordon, an incredible horseman worthy of hall of fame consideration in his own right, who won 579 races as a driver and 1,023 as a trainer, competed against Ross in the 1970s.
Garth quickly learned why the nickname ‘Cowboy’ was a perfect fit for his fellow horseman.
“I remember one Saturday afternoon during a race at Greenwood when Brent Davies was on the front and Ross was sitting with his horse on the outside,” recalled Gordon. “When we were coming around the last turn - I was sitting second over behind Ross - he took his foot out of the stirrup and pushed Brent’s bike up against the hub rail about 10 times. I don’t know where he finished, but I can remember that moment like it was yesterday.”
Those were definitely different times, but outside of those Wild West-esque antics, Gordon remembered his contemporary as a top-notch competitor.
“He was a very, very good driver. He was someone who would drive any type of horse. He had the perfect nickname because he would drive a lot of those bad actor-type horses. He was a good all-around horseman.
“When I came up to the OJC, he was in that group of the top five or six guys. I remember I would race against him on those Saturday afternoons. You could see the talent that he had.”
Hector Clouthier saw the talent too.
“I had first met Ross when I was driving at Connaught Park and Rideau Carleton,” started. “I used to tease him and say, ‘Here comes Ross the boss!’
“He had a gregarious personality. He had this mischievous grin. You knew he was up to something, but you weren’t sure what it was. But he was not mean-spirited at all.”
Clouthier saw, first-hand, countless acts of kindness from the man he warmly referred to as “an oversized leprechaun.”
“He was very generous to people. It seemed the more down you were, the more generous he was. I saw him hand a $20, $50 or $100 bill to people in the industry, who were down and out on their luck.
“I respected the man on so many levels. I can’t say enough about his kindness towards others in the industry. He was very good to people.”
Ross was also good to horses.
It was something Rick Curran noticed the first day he started working for his uncle.
“He taught me everything I know about racehorses,” said Rick, who went on to post 1,187 driving wins and 107 more as a trainer. “Every horse was the same to him, whether it was worth $100,000 or $500. He treated them the same way.
“I have a lot of good memories. He taught me a lot.”
Ross definitely had an eccentric side, both on and off the track.
“He had a pet monkey in the barn area at Greenwood,” laughs Kendra Casselman, who, like her husband Al, also trained Standardbreds “Al was waiting with the truck and trailer on Queen Street one time, to pick up Ross after the races, and the monkey was in the cage in the back of the truck.”
Traffic of every type came to a halt as curious onlookers clamouring for a look.
“Everyone on Queen Street came and looked at the monkey. It was a big crowd, and the monkey was making all kinds of noise,” Kendra reminisces.
Clouthier recalled a time he drove against Ross at Quyon, a small Quebec racetrack about an hour’s drive northwest of Ottawa.
It was a memorable experience, to say the least.
“Ross had this horse in a race, one who I had never heard of before or after. I don’t even know how he got in there with this nag.
“Quyon was a half-mile track. We went around the first lap and I looked over - I was on front - and I couldn’t even see Ross because he was so far behind. We’re coming around again and I’m wondering where is he?”
Clouthier got his answer mid-way down the lane.
“There’s Ross, and he’s cutting in front of us. You know what he did? There was a softball game going on at the Quyon Fair - there were no fences - and he cut across the infield of the track,” Hec laughs at the memory.
“He won the race and I said to him, ‘What happened there?’ He just looked at me and said, ‘I took the shortcut, but don’t worry, you’re going to win because I’m going to be disqualified’. He laughed and said, ‘I think I almost could have caught one of those fly balls going over my head on the way across.’”
Sideshows and shortcuts aside, Ross was a bona fide star on the racetrack.
And not just as a driver. He also ran a successful training operation.
“Ross was a good horseman,” noted Gordon. “Back in those days there was a lot of claiming going on. There would be at least three or four horses claimed every night. Ross ran a claiming stable of his own and did well.”
“He was a great trainer,” added Clouthier. “He didn’t start with well-bred types, but he got the most out of them. When Jack Grant started sending him higher-quality horses, look out.”
Al Casselman had a front-row seat for the majority of Ross’s career.
“I worked for Ross in the summertime during high school at Connaught Park and full-time during the last half of the 1960s and first half of the 1970s at Greenwood, Mohawk, and Garden City, but I was also around his stable when my dad [Mac Casselman] owned horses with him.
“My dad called the stable the ‘TDF Stable’. The three people in the stable stood for Three Damn Fools,” he laughs. “Then one quit and it was two damn fools, and then he quit, and it was just my dad… the damn fool.”
Whatever hat he wore however, Curran got the most out of every horse under his tutelage. Turning those tough-as-nail types into winners remained his specialty.
Skootch was a prime example of Ross’ maestro-like abilities. The son of Philip Frost, who came to Curran as a problem child, was developed into a top performer in the coveted Free For All class on the OJC circuit. He won 58 career races and earned $66,922.
“Skootch really was a CRAZY horse,” laughs Al Casselman, “and we were in the Preferred with him once during Grand Circuit racing at Greenwood. He was crazy in the post parade that night so Ross drove him into the [one-horse-wide] shack on the outside of the track where the lead-pony would stand during bad weather. Skootch started to paw like crazy and the dirt was flying right across the track and over the inside hub rail. When he got out and going, a few of the Grand Circuit drivers standing by the paddock entrance were saying things like ‘Why would they even race that thing?’ He won the race and I turned to them and said ‘That’s why we race him’, as I headed to the winner’s circle.”
HT Navy was another ornery sort who found his way to Ross, and, just like Skootch, the son of Henry T Adios was transformed into a winner. The bay, bred in New York by Derrico Stable Inc., recorded 33 victories and $174,020 in purse earnings.
“He knew what to do with horses like that,” shares Rick Curran. “He had this touch with them. He would take tough horses from people and turn them into good ones. I saw that over and over again. He just knew what to do.”
J Js Tequila was yet another prosperous Curran pupil. Competing in the OJC’s upper echelon, the son of Overtrick won 93 races and banked $168,253 in earnings.
Throughout all of Ross’s successes on the big stage though, the veteran horseman never forgot his roots, and he remained a familiar face on the Ontario fair circuit.
Whether it was competing at Lombardy or Perth in Eastern Ontario, or other quaint venues, it always felt like home for the man in the sulky.
“He loved those times, racing at the fairs,” said Gordon. “It was something he truly enjoyed and looked forward to.”
Rick Curran has similar recollections.
“He had more fun doing that than racing in Toronto. When we had the fairs here in Eastern Ontario, he would come there religiously. He would come to drive two or three and then go to Toronto to drive six or seven. He always made sure he brought horses to race to the small places to help them out too. That’s just the way he was.”
As quickly as Ross had ascended to the pinnacle of racing success however, his career sadly came to a crashing halt just as fast.
At the age of 41, he was diagnosed with Korsakoff’s Syndrome, a memory disorder that damages nerve cells and supporting cells in the brain and spinal cord, as well as the part of the brain involved with memory.
Ross, whose last drive came in December 1979, would spend the next 40-plus years of his life in a care facility, until his passing on September 14, 2020, at the age of 83.
“It was tough to see how things turned out for him,” said Rick Curran. “He loved racing and the horses so much. He accomplished many great things before his career came to an end.”
In 8,686 driving starts, Ross finished in the top-three nearly 50 per cent of the time. Records note 1,711 winners as a driver, along with $2.7 million in lifetime earnings.
Numbers and trophies are far from the only measures of Ross’s triumphs in the sport however, as his exploits inspired others close to him to follow suit in racing.
Ann Curran, his daughter, has held various racing roles over the years, and received the prestigious Cam Fella Award from Standardbred Canada, in 2008, for her work in establishing The Mildred Williams Women’s Driving Series.
Son, Chuck Curran ran a stable devoted to training and developing young horses, and trained, among others, 2002 Canadian Breeders winner Whitesand Titan ($305,108).
Ross’ older brother Neil, and Rick’s nephew, Blake, were also involved in the industry. Ross and his late wife Geraldine were also parents to son Doug and daughter Pattie. Pattie is the one that successfully nominated her late father to the Hall of Fame.
In 1988, the Cowboy was inducted into the Sportsman Hall of Fame in Smiths Falls, Ontario. He was also the recipient of the Living Legend Award by the Ontario Harness Horse Association in 2009.
Now, 15 years later, Ross has been named to the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame’s class of 2024.
“People nowadays might not know who he was, but back in the day, everyone knew who he was,” says nephew Rick. “My kids don’t know about him, but now that he is in the Hall of Fame, they will. I hope others find out too.”
On August 7th, friends and family will gather for the official hall of fame induction ceremony in Toronto, a night when the small-town kid with the big-time flair will take his place among the pantheon of all-time greats.
A most fitting honour noted those who were part of his life and times.
“I’m just ecstatic that he is going into the hall of fame,” said Clouthier. “He deserves it, and his family deserves it too.”
“It was wonderful to know that lots of other people respected how talented of a horseman he was,” added Casselman.
He was indeed a horseman who did things the cowboy way.
“He could most certainly manage a hard-to-handle horse,” praised Clouthier. “But, if you got into a race with him, and it was like racing chariots, he was even better. If you wanted to cowboy it, you couldn’t cowboy with the real cowboy. He was one-of-a-kind, and I consider myself lucky to have known him.”
This feature originally appeared in the June issue of TROT Magazine. Subscribe to TROT today by clicking the banner below.
