Former Standardbred caretaker Korina McLean developed an affinity for horses when the Children’s Aid Society sponsored a program that allowed her and other teens like her, who were living in group homes, to take riding lessons. Eventually Standardbreds became her life, but her desire to ride never left. In 2019 she took a job as a Thoroughbred exercise rider in the Kevin Attard Stable at Woodbine, but two years later disaster struck when a mount of hers flipped over one morning, injuring her badly. After months of rehab and with a heart like a good racehorse, Korina was back in the saddle long before her doctors had predicted - just in time to become the exercise rider of the filly who would take Canada by storm when she became the fastest Queen’s Plate winner in history. By Keith McCalmont.
In May 2021, exercise rider Korina McLean lay in a heap near the finish line on the Tapeta main track at Woodbine Racetrack with a 1,000 pound thoroughbred rolling over her slight frame. A little more than one year later, the 28-year-old Rockwood, Ontario resident was celebrating Moira’s track-record setting victory in the 163rd running of the Queen’s Plate.
The talented Thoroughbred filly’s score was an unlikely victory for harness racing as McLean, a former caretaker for trainers Norm Dunstan, Blake MacIntosh and Casie Coleman, to name a few, recovered from a broken pelvis and potentially life-threatening internal bleeding in time to help prepare the talented Ghostzapper filly for a victory over the boys in the first jewel of the Canadian Triple Crown.
Trained by Kevin Attard, Moira is owned by Madaket Stables, SF Racing and X-Men Stables, a syndicate of Canadian racing friends assembled by bloodstock agent Donato Lanni that also includes prominent Standardbred owners Robert LeBlanc, Steve Heimbecker, Clay Horner, David Anderson, John Fielding, Daniel Plouffe and Alexandra Verret along with Gabriel Dimiele and Nick Pelligreen.
McLean grew up in Brampton, Ontario, and spent several of her formative years in group homes, becoming a Crown Ward at age 12 with the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) as her guardian. A passion for horses proved to be her guiding light.
“One of the first people I met in racing was Lormer McClure - [driver] Bobby McClure’s father,” said McLean. “My mom worked for him a bit. But my mom didn’t raise me, I grew up in group homes and foster homes. Whenever I visited my mom when she was working for Lormer, I’d see the horses and I wanted to ride.
“I remember Lormer putting me on the back of a two-year-old colt - Southwind Vavoom - and I’d ride him bareback around the farm and go exploring,” she continued of her travels on the 21-time winning trotter. “I was 15-years-old and it was the only way to stop my annoyingness.”
The CAS sponsored a program that provided McLean and others to take riding lessons at Greyden Equestrian Facility in Erin, Ontario, then operated by Denise Knapton.
“We weren’t a therapy center. We were just a riding center that taught people how to ride and all our coaches are certified. The group home got her involved in it and a bunch of kids came in on Thursday nights and they all rode, but Korina stuck with it,” Knapton said. “She competed in hunter jumper shows and got a pony and showed it and trained it. She helped out at riding camp and was able to do some teaching. She was a good kid. She was very focused on the horses and an awesome horse woman. She was like a sponge. She just wanted to learn and do. She was such a good rider, too.”
McLean would eventually move to Caledon and started working for Dunstan.
“I groomed and they taught me how to jog. I met Brian Tropea and his brother, Jim Tropea, who had horses at Norm’s, and Jim took me under his wing and taught me a lot,” recalled McLean. “I dropped out of high school to work full time with Standardbreds. I loved learning. Even with show horses, I was taking care of them myself and riding and competing. I liked the work.
“I used to take care of one of Jim’s horses, Ale Ale Jandro, who was actually a mean horse,” she added. “I was 17 or 18 at the time and the horse was butter in my hands - that horse loved me and I loved the horse. I was the only one brave enough to deal with him.”
In 2014, McLean was working for MacIntosh and caring for Sports Chic, who was an O’Brien Award nominee in the two-year-old pacing filly division led by the Nancy Takter-trained JK Shesalady.
“Sports Chic won a lot of [OSS] Golds and was the first stakes horse I took care of,” McLean said. “She was classy from the moment I started caring for her. She looked the part and Blake really liked her. Whether they’re a good horse or a cheap claimer, I’d give them all the same individual care and love. I feel like I have a thing with fillies. I never got to sit behind her, but she was nice to be around.”
But McLean’s passion for riding still lingered and in the winter of 2018 while working for Gerald Lilley at Bill Manes’ Manestreet Stables, she caught word that Esa Lahtinen, a prominent Standardbred owner, had a Thoroughbred that needed to be broken to race.
Not one to back down from a challenge, McLean accepted the offer, brought the horse to Manestreet and broke the young horse with the assistance of Lilley. When Manes found out McLean had a Thoroughbred on the property he introduced the burgeoning horsewoman to Chris Huarte, who raised Thoroughbreds on a nearby farm.
“Chris was about to leg up his own horses for the 2019 meet and asked me to ride them in the afternoon,” McLean said. “So, I’d work the morning for Gerald and then ride in the afternoon for Chris at his farm. I did that for a couple months until the [Thoroughbred] season started, but I was starting to love riding and I wanted to ride Thoroughbreds.”
Ever determined, McLean raised the issue with Huarte and the pair went to Woodbine together one morning.
“Chris signed me in and introduced me to Kevin Attard and the rest is history. I’ve been with Kevin ever since,” said McLean.
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McLean learned to appreciate the power of a Thoroughbred from the ground up while breaking babies with Huarte.
“With the Thoroughbred, before we sit on them we call it bellying them. We’ll put our weight on their back with our belly and over to the right side with our head over their right eye so if something happens you can slide off real quick,” McLean said. “You keep doing that until they don’t flinch and then you can bring a leg over and sit on them. Some are a little spooky. You’ll see their ears twitch a bit and face towards you - not angry - but just paying attention, and you can feel their body tense up. When you feel they’re not so tense anymore that’s when it’s the right time to swing the leg over them. We’ll do that process in a stall, in a small, confined area so it’s safe.”
As she progressed through her tenure with Attard, she came to appreciate the differences between sitting in a jog cart training down a Standardbred versus the in-saddle experience of guiding a Thoroughbred.
“Both riding and driving are incredible, but nothing feels better than sitting on a Thoroughbred and feeling their full stride,” McLean said. “The rush of driving a Standardbred is getting the gravel kicked up at you and you feel the wind, but you have the jog cart and have to take wider turns. With Thoroughbreds you just get on and go and can take tighter turns if you need to. It’s more fun to breeze them than gallop - you’re going 35 miles per hour.”
She also noted the horsemanship required to handle each breed.
“With a Standardbred, you have to balance them and it’s a different hold. You have to be strong to train them a mile or jog,” McLean said. “Standardbreds like to feel more contact whereas with Thoroughbreds you have to be light in the hand and it’s more of a finesse to teach them to relax.”
But when things go wrong as an exercise rider, it can be life changing.
A little after 7:30 a.m. on a typical racetrack morning in May 2021, McLean guided her charge to the finish line at Woodbine and stood for a while watching the other horses train before launching into what was meant to be an easy three-eighths breeze.
“He was being a very good boy and I asked him to go and he got excited and tried to buck. In hindsight, I probably over corrected him,” McLean said. “I tried to push him forward and put his head up, but instead of his head coming up his [entire] body came up. He reared up with his head between his legs and he fell sideways to his left.”
The horse landed on its side and McLean’s left leg was stuck under the full weight of his body.
“I tried to pull myself out but he rolled on top of me and it was the most excruciating thing I’ve been through. I felt and heard the crack and a pop,” McLean said. “I screamed so loud it echoed through the grandstand. Everyone heard me. It was bad.”
The loose horse was apprehended by the outrider and exited the track in good order. The same could not be said for McLean.
“I was not OK. I knew something was really wrong and I was scared to move. Rob Love, the outrider, came to help me and keep me calm until the ambulance came to get me,” McLean recalled. “My left leg was dislocated and Rob told me my leg was at a 90 degree angle. The paramedics came and scooped me off the track. They had to pop my leg into place to get me on the stretcher.”
McLean, through a rush of adrenalin, called Attard from the ambulance. Her biggest concern, not being able to ride that year’s Plate contender, Stephen, in the mornings. She was delivered to the trauma center at Sunnybrook Hospital and met with a team of professionals concerned that her blood pressure was dropping.
“Ever seen Grey’s Anatomy?” asks McLean, in reference to the long running medical drama. “I always thought that show exaggerated how many doctors are there when someone shows up at the trauma unit. Well, they didn’t. I had 10 doctors on me. I was still freaking out about my horses - I have to get back to work! I was still convinced it’s just a dislocated leg.
“They started talking about having to cut my clothes off and I started freaking out and ripping my clothes off,” McLean added, with a laugh. “I’m trying to convince them not to cut my pants. They had to cut them but I made sure they didn’t cut my shirts or my boots. I wear nice clothes to ride in the morning.”
McLean said once the painkillers kicked in she felt like she was in a dream and that none of this was happening. Through the haze, she was informed that her pelvis was broken in two places.
“I had a three millimeter crack through my sacrum and I had a fracture and displacement of my L5 vertebrae. They considered surgery on my sacrum but wanted to avoid that because of all the nerves,” McLean said. “They found an internal bleed. That was the part that freaked me out and was scary. They put two platinum plugs into my femoral artery. That was not comfortable. They had to keep injecting me with dye.”
She would have a blood transfusion and because the COVID-19 pandemic was rampant at that time, she spent the night on a stretcher in the emergency room.
“I was stuck on a stretcher for five days instead of an ICU,” McLean said. “When they finally got me into the ICU, the pain meds were turning me off of food and I was sick. I was refusing to eat. I was laying down for so long that my blood pressure would drop when I got up.”
It was a traumatic experience for McLean, who suffered through the ordeal on her own at the hospital due to the many restrictions of the pandemic. She was in contact, by phone, with a number of friends and colleagues, as well as her half-brother Matt.
“He’s my rock. We’re very close,” McLean said. “I did have a lot of people calling me and trying to check in, but I was going through so many scans and procedures. I’m lucky to have a lot of people that care about me. People that wanted to see me couldn’t because of COVID.”
Broken and alone, anxious thoughts swirled through McLean’s mind - would she be able to ride again? Who would take care of her horses? Will she be OK?
McLean spent a month in the hospital before being admitted to Sunnybrook’s St. John’s Rehab center.
“My brother was my designated visitor and being able to see him once a week was the best part,” said an emotional McLean. “My brother does not cry ever but when he first saw me, he cried. He knows me and how much I love my job and he didn’t like seeing me like that. I wasn’t even walking yet. We’ve been through a lot together.”
But the ever resilient McLean soon found her stride.
“When I took my first step it was an emotional thing and so overwhelming,” McLean said.
She was out of the hospital by June and on the phone with her co-worker Wayne Green on the way home with one simple request.
“I called to ask when he’s going to bring me to the track. I was on crutches and couldn’t drive, so Wayne ‘volunteered’ and I was at the track three days after I got out,” laughed McLean. “I wanted to see Stephen - he was my moon and my stars. I watched the horses train and got to see everyone at the track
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McLean’s bones may have broken, but her spirit never wavered. A week after being released from hospital, she was off crutches and defying the expectations of her doctor, who said she wouldn’t be able to ride until October.
“I asked him, ‘What if I just ride the barn pony,’” McLean laughed.
While at a party, McLean could not resist hopping on an Equicizer - a mechanical horse used by riders to practice their skills.
“I wanted to see how it felt to sit in a saddle and it felt great,” she said. “About five and a half weeks after the accident I’m back on the barn pony. I rode for two hours and was very sore after, but happier than a kid in a candy store.”
McLean was grooming and hot-walking horses while waiting to be healthy enough to resume her career as an exercise rider when an unraced two-year-old named Moira shipped in to Woodbine and ended up in Korina’s care.
“I immediately fell in love with her. I said to Kevin ‘I really like this one. She’s pretty,’” recalled McLean.
But Moira, a $150,000 Keeneland September Yearling Sale purchase, was more than just pretty - she was fast. The talented bay captured the Princess Elizabeth Stakes on debut in October 2021 and finished second in the Grade 3 Mazarine Stakes one month later to complete a promising juvenile campaign.
McLean was aboard Moira as exercise rider from day one and Attard praised the young horsewoman for her ability to bring out the best in each animal.
“She’s adaptable to different types of horses in that she cares so much, that she wants to see the horses do well, and she can be creative at times in ways to get the horses to go as fast as they can go,” Attard said. “The horses are all individuals and they want to go a certain way, but we try to get them to use themselves the best they can on a daily basis where they get the most benefit out of their training in order to be the best athlete they can. With Korina, she’s keen on getting them to do that to the best of their ability.”
Moira began her sophomore season with a win in the Fury Stakes in June, and in July was bet down to even-money in the Woodbine Oaks - the premier race for Canadian-bred three-year-old fillies.
However, she would have to overcome a little incident in the saddling paddock, throwing one shoe and bending another. Despite the best efforts of the farrier, Moira ended up racing without hind shoes. It barely mattered as she romped by 10 3/4-lengths.
Attard forged a new plan for Queen’s Plate Day, electing to saddle Moira on the walk with McLean and the filly’s groom, Peter Lopez, providing assistance.
“She was a lot more calm doing it that way as opposed to standing still. She has a few quirks on race day but apart from that she’s a straightforward horse,” Attard said.
“Horses have bonds and connections with their humans and I think hearing their voices can be a claiming influence for them. Obviously, both of them did a great job on both days, really. When horses react suddenly it’s a fine line with the person being at the end of the shank to control them and not fight with them too much where they either flip over or get scratched. Both Korina and Peter handled that situation extremely well.”
McLean said she felt assured throughout the saddling process on Plate Day, which was conducted in front of a full house at Woodbine.
“I had butterflies because I wanted her to be a good girl, but I also have to walk in with confidence so she can feed off of me and feel that everything is going to be OK,” McLean said. “For me, the most nerves happen on the tarmac when she’s on post parade. I just want her - win or lose - to come home safe.”
Moira would come flying home. With jockey Rafael Hernandez up, Moira settled in seventh position in the 1 1/4-mile test before advancing with purpose into the final turn and opening up a three-length lead at the stretch call. She rocketed home under no urging in a track record 2:01.48 with Hernandez celebrating through the final strides.
“I saw her starting to move at the three-eighths pole and in the blink of an eye she’s gobbling up ground so fast and opening up,” McLean said. “Holy shit! I was confident she’d run a good race but to win it by that many lengths and with the jockey celebrating the last sixteenth… was this really happening? I didn’t hear about the track record until we were back at the barn. Not only did I win my first Queen’s Plate as an exercise rider, we made history. That was really cool.
“Sometimes I get jealous of Raffie, he gets to push the really cool button on her,” McLean added, regarding the two-time Plate winning rider. “I can’t explain the feeling you get when you breeze her. She’s just sitting there waiting for you to ask her to go. She’s so cool. She does it so effortlessly. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to press the nitro button on her.”
It was also a first win in the ‘Gallop for the Guineas’ for Attard, who had his first Queen’s Plate try in 2007 with the colt Alezzandro, who finished second to the Emma-Jayne Wilson-piloted Mike Fox.
“When you see Moira making that move you get excited, but this race is a hard race to win and you don’t want to celebrate until they hit the wire,” Attard said. “I’ve been down that path where I thought I had chances to win and came up short.
“With Alezzandro, Emma Wilson was scrubbing her horse at the quarter-pole and Alezzandro looked like a winner at that point of the race,” he added. “Everybody was under a drive and he was the only horse that looked comfortable. Sure enough, Emma basically lifted that horse up and carried him home. So, I don’t take this win for granted. I’m very privileged to be a part of her success.”
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Moira skipped the second leg of the Canadian Triple Crown - the Prince of Wales Stakes, won by Duke of Love on September 13th at Fort Erie - and will make her next start in a Grade 1 event on turf in either the $750,000 E. P. Taylor Stakes on October 8th at Woodbine or the $600,000 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup on October 15th at Keeneland.
Wherever Moira goes, McLean plans to be right there alongside her, but she admits she also still has a soft spot for Standardbreds.
“I love my Standardbreds, I really do,” said McLean , who even won a race as an owner with trotter Cool Creek Valley in September 2017 at Flamboro Downs. “The first couple years that I rode, I still paddocked some at night at Mohawk, but I’d be so tired the next morning I had to give it up. But one day, I’ll be back in the Standardbred game, maybe as an owner. I like to have experienced and learned from both sides of the industry, but right now, I’m just enjoying riding.”
Knapton, who took in McLean as a teenager, swelled with pride in seeing how far her young pupil has come.
“In the group home it was pretty rough. That was a tough time for her. She could hardly wait to get out, and when she did get out and she came to live with me there was a huge difference in the girl,” Knapton said. “You could tell the drama was gone. She made it and I’m really happy for her and so proud.
“She’s tenacious. She doesn’t give up for anything. She’s been through a lot but she kept going,” Knapton added. “It didn’t matter if she was having a bad day or having to put up with drama, I could always count on her. She had eyes in the back of her head when it came to the horses. She was such a good horse person. It was obviously a passion and something she loved and excels at.”
A lasting impression through the writing of this story is how appreciative McLean is of opportunities provided and assistance given along the way - not once did she consider herself to be disadvantaged.
“I think she’s had to do it that way to keep herself afloat. In her life, there were very few people who would say, ‘atta girl,’” Knapton said. “She never really had a lot of that. She had to take charge of herself. I’m very proud of her.”
Attard also acknowledged how far McLean has come in such a short period of time in the Thoroughbred game.
“She’s a great worker and a big asset. She strives for the best… wants what’s best for the horses and cares deeply for their welfare,” Attard said. “She’s come a long way and should be very proud of herself. She obviously wants to learn more and better herself in the industry, and one day, who knows, maybe she will have an even bigger role.”
McLean offers the following advice to those that might currently be in a group home and struggling.
“If you have a passion for something, you should pursue that passion,” McLean said.
And she quickly followed by offering her own praise of the CAS program that allowed her to develop that first meaningful bond with horses.
“If I ever won the lottery, I’d donate money to the CAS and start a foundation for kids to have horseback riding lessons. It helps. Horses heal,” McLean said. “It became a privilege that if you were on your best behaviour you could go and ride. It was an incentive to put me down a better road. I loved it so much, I put my mind to it and worked as much as I could at the barn to get even more riding lessons beyond what CAS provided. It gets your mind off of things to connect with these animals, and they really do help you, because they understand you.”
As for Moira, the filly who won the race likely to be named the King’s Plate for many years to come following the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II...
“It’s only fitting that a queen wins the last Queen’s Plate. I’m excited to see where she goes next,” McLean said.
The same could be said for her resilient exercise rider.
TROT writer Keith McCalmont has decided to donate his stipend for writing this feature to the Children’s Aid Society in Korina’s name, and Managing Director Dan Fisher is matching it.
