Dr. Ian Moore’s accomplishments as a trainer are many, and most could easily recite a list of his biggest stars and races won. But when asked to share a story from his career that he fondly remembers but others may not, the answer was an easy one: ‘Winning the Gold Cup & Saucer as a driver, in 1988, with The Papermaker’. Here, Doc Moore shares this very fond memory of his with TROT. By John Rallis.
As Dr. Ian Moore pulled out a ring that was given to him in 1988, he reminisced about one of his favourite accomplishments of what he can now call a Hall of Fame career.
A proud native of PEI, the multifaceted horseman earned that piece of jewelry after capturing the most esteemed race Atlantic Canada has to offer: the Gold Cup & Saucer.
While many people can rattle off numerous other accomplishments that the man they simply call ‘Doc’ has made during his incredible career, this moment, in particular, is one he still beams about to this day.
“In 1988, I was six years into vet school,” he recalls. “My wife Nancy and I had our own vet clinic that was just outside Charlottetown, PEI, called Island Equine Clinic. Since I was trying to carve out a full-time career as a veterinarian, I only had about four horses of my own at the time. That was enough for me, especially given the fact I had plenty of other peoples’ horses I had to tend to. I was pretty occupied.”
In addition to running his own clinic, Doc traveled frequently around different parts of Canada, where he’d examine a multitude of racehorses for his clients.
There was one horse back then in particular, who he did vet work on over the course of its racing career, that played a big role in the momentous Gold Cup & Saucer victory that Doc relishes to this day.
“The Papermaker,” says Doc with a smile. “He was from the second crop from Abercrombie, which is interesting in its own right.
“The first crop of Abercrombie wasn’t worth a damn, so the second crop became a lot more affordable. Because of that… a handful of people ended up with some quality horses.”
One of those beneficiaries of the second crop of Abercrombie, were Rob and Gail McLellan of R G McGroup Ltd, who purchased The Papermaker, in Lexington, in 1983, for $4,500. It was money well spent.
“He was a very talented horse,” shares Doc. “The only problem was that he had soundness issues his entire career. I had to treat him constantly because of it.”
The Papermaker spent his early days with Henry Smallwood, where he bounced around racing at Sackville Downs, Truro Raceway and even Blue Bonnets.
“I even used to fly out a couple of times a year to Montreal just to do some work on The Papermaker. My main goal was just to keep him sound over the years and I tried my very best.
“I’d fly to Montreal in the morning, work on some horses, watch the races at Blue Bonnets, then fly back that very same evening. I don’t think I could do that right now (laughing).”
The Papermaker had a chronic suspensory issue on his one hind leg, and as a five-year-old things started to get a little worse for him.
“In 1988, he was stabled at Mohawk. He was racing in Toronto and he went lame again. He also developed a couple of other problems to go along with his original one.”
Doc and one of The Papermaker’s owners, the aforementioned Ron McLellan, decided it was time for the horse to hang it up. The soundness issues became too many, and Doc agreed it was time to give the gritty pacer a new career.
“Ron and I, who have been great friends and partners for a very long time, used to stand three or four stallions together at Island Equine Clinic. We decided to retire The Papermaker and have him become a stallion.”
As The Papermaker was getting set for the next phase of his racing career however, Doc couldn’t help but recognize how good the horse still looked.
“We shut him down, but he still looked so great,” admitted Doc. “But he had developed a suspensory tear in the front, in addition to his chronic issue in the back.
“I said to Ronnie, ‘Maybe I can jog him a little bit just to keep him fit?’ I told him that nobody would even see me doing that on my farm, and if he’s lame, then I won’t bother with it anymore.”
Fast-forward two months, and The Papermaker was set to qualify; he was coming back to race.
“I called Ron and told him the horse was ready to go. He was ready to get back out there and compete… and he bred sixty mares in two months after he started racing again! He was something else.”
In his first four races in the month of May, Doc Moore guided The Papermaker to four straight wins at Charlottetown Driving Park (CDP). After his second win however, he suffered yet another injury.
“He broke a splint bone with the suspensory issue that he had in his front leg,” recalls Doc. “I told Ron I wouldn’t mess with it too much, so I performed a cryosurgery on it and he just kept on going. There was just no quit in him.”
After wins in the Exhibition Cup and the Governor’s Plate, The Papermaker was set for a second try in the Gold Cup and Saucer, where he was looking for a better showing than his previous try, in 1986.
“In his Gold Cup and Saucer elimination in 1986, Henry Smallwood and horse were disqualified after causing an accident ” recalls Doc. “It wasn’t a good experience, so I wanted to make sure I gave Ron and Gail something positive to remember from this race.
After a third place finish in their elimination, Doc Moore and The Papermaker had secured one of nine spots in the final. Doc’s focus, like always, was just to keep him sound.
“Because of his soundness issues, we never trained him all summer. We would jog him 6-7 miles everyday and then on Monday, Wednesday and Friday - sometimes even Saturday - we’d use him for breeding. That was our schedule with him.
“He would even breed on the days he’d race, but he wouldn’t put forth a good effort when we did that. He’d get pretty cranky, so we tried to avoid that.”
The week leading up to the signature event, everyone stayed the course.
“They used to have a media day on the Wednesday leading up to the final,” recalls Doc. “Everyone would bring their horses in, and the Gold Cup and Saucer girls were there to take photos and what-not.
“When that was all finished, everyone would leave right after, to go train their horses… not us. Raymond Kelly, who worked for us at the time - we called him ‘Wacky’ - asked me if we were going to train him. I said to him ‘Well, we won nine races already this year, did we train him for any of those? Take him home and jog him six or seven miles.’”
Early on the evening of the final, the weather could not have been any better. But that didn’t last too long.
“The first four races that night, the sun was out and shining and the weather was beautiful. Then, shortly thereafter, the skies opened up and it came down pretty hard. People nowadays have no idea what a real sloppy track was like (laughing).
“Believe it or not, when the rain came pouring down, I was smiling,” shares Doc. “The Papermaker hadn’t lost a race in the mud over the last couple of years, which was unusual because of his soundness issues, but I knew this played into my favour.
“When the race went, you couldn’t really see anything. I was the only one who had a flip-up screen on, but even that wasn’t much of a help.”
What Doc did see however, was a clear-path to victory with the way the race began to shape up. He just needed to avert any disasters.
“I was sitting fourth up the backstretch and I could see Mike MacDonald and his horse, Gimble, carrying Phil Pinkney and Beeler Hanover, three or four wide off the hub rail,” he shares. “Because of that, there was a whole bunch of room up the inside. That’s when I knew I had to make a decision; do I move to the outside, or do I shoot up the rail? I knew one thing, I had tons of horse.
“There was a chestnut horse behind me by the name of Maple Grove Shadow. Because of that, I ducked inside and shot up the inside. As we hit the turn, Phil [Pinkney] was yelling at Mike [MacDonald], and Mike and I veered into each other and we hooked wheels. Right away I was thinking ‘Oh crap.’”
Luckily for Doc, he avoided disaster.
“We were going so fast that we were able to unhook right away,” says Doc. “Because of that, I was able to keep up my momentum going up the inside and we won the race in 2:01.1 on a wicked sloppy track. On a normal track today, it would probably be six seconds faster.”
After Doc and The Papermaker crossed the wire, he was quickly confronted by Mike MacDonald, who he had just hooked wheels with prior to the victory.
“When we were pulling up after the wire, Mike came right up beside me and bangs my wheel with his wheel, and he quickly goes ‘Don’t ever do that again, young fella.’
“But then when he turned around, he looked back and said, ‘Oh, by the way, congratulations on winning the Gold Cup.’ I mean, that’s how classy of a guy Mike was. We were the best of friends.”
The victory gave Doc Moore the first Gold Cup and Saucer trophy of his career - something every young Maritime horseman dreams about.
“I’m definitely up there in terms of Gold Cup and Saucer consolations,” Doc says with a chuckle, “and it was nice to actually get one on the driving side too.”
Doc, and everyone else close to him, made sure to celebrate that night, the way most Maritimers know how to… with plenty of beer.
“We went back to the barn and ordered pizza and lots of beer. We had to order it from the bootleggers, because at two o’clock in the morning, where else are you going to get to booze? (laughing).
“I even have a picture from that night with Mark MacDonald,” shares Doc. “His mother, Gail, brought him down to the barn area to celebrate too. Little did I know I was standing next to a future Gold Cup and Saucer winner then as well… not to mention that he’d win a Meadowlands Pace for me with Lawless Shadow 33 years later!”
While Doc Moore and everyone else celebrated the momentous feat, little did they know what was to come shortly thereafter.
“A couple days leading up to that race, The Papermaker was coughing,” Doc recalls. “Back then, during Old Home Week, they used to race two cards a day, every day. Monday through Saturday there were double-cards every single day. There were so many horses around, which meant that it wasn’t uncommon to have viruses spread around too… and it wasn’t an ideal virus for aged horses.
“The morning following the race, Ron, Gail and most of our family at the time, came out to take pictures at the barn, and the coughing didn’t stop for The Papermaker.”
Doc was keen on finding out why.
“I wasn’t at the veterinary college at the time, as I was out on my own, but I was consulting with a friend of mine during the course of it. Neither one of us could figure out what the problem was.
“I took him in to get x-rays on his lungs, and we found out that the horse had gotten strangles, back when he was in Kentucky, just after the [yearling] sale. He was forced to stay there for four months [in 1983] before coming to Nova Scotia to get broke by Henry Smallwood. His abscess was dormant the entire time on the basis of his heart; it had a wall that was almost three inches thick.
“The virus that was going around Old Home Week that year affected aged horses, so at first we figured that maybe that’s what he had contracted, but that wasn’t the case. Something got that abscess going like a volcano, and it just erupted. By the time we found out what happened, it was too late.”
As Doc was gearing to attend a mixed sale in Ontario in October of 1988, his mind could not escape his beloved champion. He had to go along with his business, but The Papermaker remained in his thoughts.
“I was sitting there watching TV the night before my flight to go to the sale... “I had a big, glass-covered, framed picture right above my TV from the winner’s circle from that night [the Gold Cup and Saucer] that consisted of my wife and everyone else. For whatever reason, it just fell off the wall.
“Believe it or not, when I went to pick up the frame, there was an X marked in the glass, right across the horse’s head. I ran over to the barn right after that and I could tell that The Papermaker was dying.”
Shortly after Doc flew out to the sale the next day, he received the bad news.
“Half-an-hour after the plane took off, I found out The Papermaker had passed,” recalls an emotional Doc Moore. “The very last race of his career was the two of us winning the Gold Cup and Saucer together. It was an emotional moment.”
Decades later, after having trained so many amazing champions such as Shadow Play, State Treasurer, Century Farroh and Tattoo Artist (just to name a few), Dr. Ian Moore puts his Gold Cup and Saucer winning charge right up with the best of them.
“I’ve always said this before: I’ve been so fortunate to be associated with so many good horses over the years, and The Papermaker wouldn’t take a back seat to any of them. He was as good a horse as I’ve ever had. He did nothing but good for everyone who he associated with, and he sure as hell did a lot for me.
“After the post-mortem, we buried The Papermaker on the backstretch [at CDP]. Back then it was common to bury horses in the backstretch of racetracks at the Maritimes, and he was the last horse to be buried there. We buried him right at the point where I made the decision to go up the inside.”
Even 35 years after The Papermaker’s passing, his name still lives-on proudly in the Maritimes.
“Ron [McLellan] started ‘The Papermaker Pace’, which is a race that takes place every year on the same night as the Gold Cup and Saucer. He’s been doing it for 35 years now, which is a great way to pay homage to a great horse.”
If you’ve been ‘Down Home’, you know what this race means to people from Atlantic Canada. It’s exactly why this race holds a special meaning in Doc Moore’s heart, and why this is one of his favourite memories from all of his years racing - both driving and training.
“Part of what makes that victory so special is what happened 24 years later,” says Doc. “I had a horse called Eighteen, who was named after Serge Savard’s number when he played hockey. I brought Eighteen to Charlottetown to race in the Gold Cup and Saucer in 2012, and my son Tyler [Moore], who had just started to drive full-time that year, ended up winning the race with him. We became the only father-son duo to win that race, and that still holds strong for 60+ years now. It’s special.”
Dr. Ian Moore will be the first to tell you that he never forgets where he came from, and he certainly will never forget the horse who gave him his first Gold Cup and Saucer, en route to his rightful place in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.
Congratulations Doc!
This feature originally appeared in the June issue of TROT Magazine. Subscribe to TROT today by clicking the banner below.
