Back On Top

Chris Christoforou grew up destined to be a harness driver, and his career as such has seen many peaks and valleys. Today, he is once again emerging as one of Canada’s leading drivers.

Story by Keith McCalmont

The record books will tell you that Chris Christoforou's first win came in 1990 at Flamboro Downs with Delias Star, but that's wrong.

Truth be told, the veteran driver, fresh off of winning the driver's title at the recently concluded Mohawk Summer meet, with 117 wins and $3 million in purse earnings, notched his first victory in his parent's living room at the age of four.

As he recalls, he put together a pretty good trip.

“Remember those little Hot Wheels cars?” grins Christoforou. “When I was a kid, we had this carpet in the house that was a circular shape and, in my mind that was Meadowlands Racetrack. I'd line the cars up ten wide behind a homemade starting gate and race them around in slow motion moving one car after the other.”

Most kids in his north Toronto neighbourhood were dreaming of end-to-end rushes on skates wearing a blue and white Leafs jersey, but not Christoforou. This kid had other ideas of what an end-to-end rush meant.

“I would always win coming from off the pace,” he laughs of those childhood qualifiers. “That was more exciting and more fun in my eyes. Even today, people probably would say my style reflects that. I'm not a speed driver. I like to win with as much horse left as I can.”

A young Christoforou wore that carpet-thread bare until his father, renowned horseman Charalambos Christoforou, finally allowed his son a chance to sit behind a horse. At the age of six. Six!

“I remember jogging a horse called Wide Chance at Greenwood. He had a bowed tendon and was working on getting back to the races. That got me hooked on harness racing at a young age,” says Christoforou. “When I was younger, it was about having fun. My Dad would just turn me loose to look after whichever horse I wanted as long as it wasn't one I could make a mistake with.”

But as Christoforou grew older and started to show some flair in the bike after countless training miles, the bombastic Charalambos decided it was time his son learned how to drive properly.

While it wasn't quite the same regimen Walter Gretzky organized for his son, peppering a young Wayne with game situation questions on a backyard rink, it wasn't far off.

“I can still hear my Dad saying, 'Send Chris with the trotter,'” says Christoforou. “Every time with the trotter, and never with the pacers, because if you can keep a trotter together, especially a young one, everything else will come easier.”

For a scrawny teenager, driving trotters was the equivalent of a young hockey player stepping up two leagues to play against older kids. The challenge, in both cases, is one of strength and finesse.

Trotters will send out little signals that let a driver know a break is going to happen. Reversing that process isn't easy.

“It's all in the lines. It can mean a few millimeters one way or the other... whether it's time to take a hold or give them just a little bit more line because you want them to reach out and stop hitting,” explains Christoforou.

Taking a hold requires the strength to keep a 1000lb animal in check, like a hockey player fending off a body check. The flip side is pure finesse - a flick of the wrist that can be a game changer.

“You have to know when to do which. People can say someone's a natural, but that's baloney. Some may be better at it than others, but it only comes from experience,” he says. “Let me tell you, it's been a long ride.”

That long ride to the top was hastened by the emergence of a trotter named Earl.

“Earl was raised on our farm from the day he was born. We trained him down and even though I was only a year into my career my Dad let me drive him,” says Christoforou. “My Father was very good to me like that. He put me on 90 percent of the stable when I started driving and gave me a real shot.”

And Earl, he won everything. Behind the Balanced Image bay, Christoforou won all kinds of races, and even got to take the trip to Sweden to drive him in the famed Elitlopp.

In 1993, Christoforou became the second youngest driver (behind Richie Silverman) to win a prestigious Breeders Crown race, when he and Earl captured the Aged Trot division in his own backyard at Mohawk.

“Earl broke world records and was great on any sized track,” says Christoforou. “He made me look better than I was at the time because he was such a gifted horse.”

As his father's stable bulged upwards of 80 horses, it made life that much easier for the up-and-coming driver.

“My Dad didn't really slow down until I was well into my 20s and making it as a driver. There's no doubt it was an advantage,” says Christoforou.

His career reached a pinnacle in 2000 when he guided Astreos to a famous victory in the Little Brown Jug for a partnership that included his father.

“The Jug tops the bucket list. Growing up it was the Hambletonian and the Jug,” says Christoforou. “To have a chance to win one and get it done was my Stanley Cup. The fact that my father and cousin owned a piece of the horse was crazy.”

The Jug victory required a very good horse, but also a heady drive given the presence of the mighty Gallo Blue Chip.

“I knew I had a good enough horse to be in the Jug. He'd been racing well and was second in the Cane (and The Meadowlands Pace). The only thing I was concerned about was that I didn't think we could beat Gallo Blue Chip. He was a monster,” recalls Christoforou.

In order to slay the monster, Christoforou devised, for him, an almost unthinkable strategy.

“I knew I didn't have the horsepower to pass Gallo Blue Chip in the last quarter of a mile because he was just too strong. He would not let you by him. He was that special,” says Christoforou. “But, I thought if I could get in front of him, on a half-mile track, he might have the same problem with Astreos.”

Luck played its part as well when Astreos drew inside Gallo Blue Chip in the Jug final. Neither would win that heat after battling each other on the front end, with Chris refusing to give up the lead and rail control, but it forced a race-off and the rest is history.

“We got the front and Astreos was just awesome,” smiles Christoforou when discussing the four-horse race-off.

It wasn't quite the last-to-first brush drawn up on his mom's carpet, but the result saw his name etched in history.

“Casie Coleman recently posted a picture of the Jug trophy with all the winners on it and before I won it there weren't many, if any, names of drivers that were based here in Canada. But after me there were a lot of familiar names and I thought that was really cool,” notes Christoforou.

After Astreos, it would seem that Christoforou's career path was meteoric.

His named was attached to every stake worth winning in Ontario - including multiple Canadian Breeders', the Fan Hanover, Oakville, Burlington, as well as the Champlain Stakes (both pace and trot). He'd also capture two more Breeders Crown titles, with Grinfromeartoear in the Three-Year-Old Colt Pace, and Allamerican Nadia in the Three-Year-Old Filly Pace.

In 1999, he was named Driver of the Year in Canada with 643 victories and a then-record $6.6 million in purses. In 2002, he again won the O'Brien Award, and captured his third in 2003, the year he set a personal best in earnings, driving the winners of over $11.9 million.

But then, after a few more decent years, the numbers dwindled, and from 2008 to 2010 Christoforou failed to reach the century mark in victories in any of those seasons.

Something was off.

“I got hurt and was given something for the pain, and that's how it got started,” explains Christoforou about his previously well documented personal struggles.

In 2010, an extended hiatus culminated in the three-time O'Brien winner seeking outside help to get his life in order.

Upon returning from his hiatus Chris realized quickly that there were many great people in the industry, like Norm Clements, that were there to support him.

“It's truly a family, this industry, and the unwavering support that I got from people like Norm, and many others, helped tremendously”, Christoforou recalls.

“I'm lucky to have come through the other side” he says. “One day I just realized what had to be done, and that I had to take care of myself first.”

He doesn't like to talk about that dark period of his life.

“I'd agree there have been peaks and valleys in my career,” he says.

And perhaps lingering on the negative aspects of a four-year stretch can really only serve as fodder for gossip or negativity.

Legendary Canadian rocker Neil Young once said, “The one thing about the past is that you can't change it. All you can change is what's happening now.”

Christoforou has embraced the now.

“I go to the gym and I try to eat well. Most importantly, I go home to my family. I try to avoid extremes,” he says.

His wife Camilla, his mother and father, and a host of good friends and colleagues propped him up and stood by him when he needed it most. And he's thankful for that. But, he's not going to dwell on it.

Instead, he prefers to focus on things he's thankful for, like family.

“I have a 12-year-old daughter, Emma, and a six-year-old son, Niklas,” smiles Christoforou proudly. “Emma is from a previous relationship and lives with her mother Joanne Colville, but I get together with my daughter as much as possible.”

Niklas does not race Hot Wheels cars around the Christoforou family living room.

“Niklas has no interest in horses whatsoever which is shocking to everyone,” laughs Christoforou. “Especially as his mother was also involved in the business in Norway before she came here. We met when she moved to Canada and worked for my father. We both love racing but it doesn't move Niklas.

“Emma, on the other hand, is horse crazy. She's a very good rider and just recently won some ribbons at the Milton Fair. She has a real touch with horses which is understandable as she's been on a farm, and around horses, her whole life.”

His relationship with his parents is an important one.

“My parents and I are very close and I like to see them as often as I can. Dad has a stable and I work nights, so it's tough but we make time for each other. They spend a lot of time with my kids and that makes me happy,” he says.

And his wife, Camilla, is perhaps the greatest prize he's ever won.

“My wife holds the family together. It's not easy being married to someone who is out working seven days a week, late at night, even if you know it's going to be that way,” says Christoforou. “We'd only just started seeing each other when I had my trouble and she was brave to stay the course.”

In a rather unlikely turn of events, it seems that Standardbred Canada played a key role in Christoforou's resurgent career stemming back to a simple web poll in the short months following the veteran reinsman's comeback.

“The poll asked, if you could have one of these drivers for your horse in a $1-million race, who it would be,” he recalls of the query that offered a list of 20 drivers. “A week passed and I looked to see where I would be, and I was maybe 17th. I was OFFENDED.

“I'm pretty sure a few years before that I'd have been at the top of that list. It hurt. I didn't want to be that guy. I wanted to be at the top. Maybe that's a little vain, but that's how I felt. Ever since then, I've put in a lot of effort with the trainers giving them as much information as I could after a drive. It motivated me.”

Even with the worst of his troubles out of the way, Christoforou realized he still wasn't quite himself.

“I don't know if I'd lost the passion, but it took me awhile to get dialed back in and take it as seriously as I once did. Instead of doing it just to make a living, I started doing it because I wanted to win races and to have fun,” he says.

And now that he's having fun again and winning races, Christoforou is keen to maintain a few key skills of the sport, as it applies to driving and horsemanship, while advocating changes that can help harness racing grow in a radically competitive market.

Getting back to his own roots, Christoforou is challenging his fellow drivers to slow down.

“Anybody can make speed. I can throw a bag of sand on a race bike and tie the lines around it and it'll make speed, believe me,” he says. “To me, the exciting part of horse racing is the tactics. Putting yourself in the right position in the race - which sometimes is on the front, but not every time. They don't pay at the quarter pole.

“The most dangerous horses (to try and beat) are ones that rate. I drive a horse called American In Paris. She races in the Mares Preferred and if she's feeling good and on her game she can win from anywhere on the track. When she's good, all you have to do is dictate the trip and have her in the right spot to get the job done. That's a horse that was taught how to race.”

With the Woodbine meet just underway, Christoforou is leery of a return to rocket drives on a seven-eighth's track that might serve to not only be bad for the horse, but also the bettor.

“I see a lot of guys at Woodbine that are very aggressive early and I don't like it. I think it's tough on the horses,” he says. “Plus, if you watch the horses at the head of the stretch at Mohawk, from the front horse to the last horse it's usually about five lengths. At Woodbine the field could be stretched out 15 to 20 lengths. That can't be fun for those people betting the horses.”

“I really wish at some point we could change it up and make some longer distance races. People might think that's harder on the horse, but I think it would be easier as we'd get some slower earlier fractions. It would keep horses sounder longer. Thoroughbreds have that and I think it's something that would be interesting for the fans and the bettors.”

In addition to varying the length of races, there's another pet peeve he'd like to deal with.

“The UN-fair start pole is the worst,” he says. “It's not good for the betting public. That pole should, at most, be two lengths before the start. It's too far back and if a horse is just inside it, there's nothing fair about that start.”

Given that he grew up with a father with a stable full of good horses, it's fair to say that Christoforou received a pretty fair start in the game.

He shakes his head as he tells the story of a picture that still sits on a mantle in his parent's house.

“I'm three-years-old wearing an actual driver's suit, sitting behind a plastic horse with a plastic wheel barrow hooked up to the back of it with string for lines,” he groans. “I'm wearing a baseball batter's helmet with sunglasses and a little whip. That was my first win picture. My future was set early, that's for sure.”

While there have been bumps along the way, he's now back on top of Canada's driver's standings with over $4.8 million in earnings through October 20th. And the now 43-year-old Christoforou, rapidly approaching 6,000 wins and $100 million in career earnings, just might need to borrow the shades from that young prodigy in the picture, as the future, once again, looks bright.