Fathers and sons, in a lot of cases, go together like oil and water – not well. It’s not all hugs and kisses all the time. Randy and Kyle Radawetz are a bit different. And I mean that in the nicest way.

Not only are they pals, they’re also boss and employee with Pacific Industrial Scales during the day and equal partners during the night in what has become a rather lucrative sideline – handicapping tournaments. Although one may be more equal than the other. Let’s find out. “Your kid says he’s the brains of the operation,” I tell Randy, 44. “Your old man says he’s the brains of the operation,” I tell Kyle, 23.

Both of them laugh. This is no fun for me, but they’re having a ball. Sunday, they’ll be at Schanks in south Calgary for a $10,000 Alberta Handicapping Tournament Tour event. Father will be drinking a Caesar and son will be studying a Northlands thoroughbred program and telling the old man what to do. And he’ll be listening. It’s a good bet – or a few of them, actually – they’ll go home with more money than they arrived with. Memories are made of this.

Next Saturday, they’ll be here at Northlands, in the Paddock Theatre, for what can be called the granddaddy of them all in these parts – a $20,000 handicapping tournament showdown, with $10,000 to the winner. They’ll enter separately, work together and split the profits. If form charts and bloodlines mean anything in horse racing, and they do, they enter both events as the morning-line favourites.

“I’m having a ball,” Randy Radawetz says. “Spending time with my son, that’s the best part. I’m the first to admit he does most of the work. He’s the pro. We’ve been pretty lucky, too.” You gotta be good to be lucky, right? And when you combine luck, skill and hard work, well … this is what happens.

Two weeks ago – on Father’s Day, no less – they won a Tour event in Fort McMurray worth $10,000. Last fall at Northlands, they won a harness handicapping event. Two weeks ago, in Cochrane, they led all the way … until the last race. The big race in Fort McMurray was a win by a 20-to-one longshot in just the second race. The horse’s name? “Can’t remember,” Kyle says.

The son is the gambler in the family. Blame it on his grandmother Marge. She’s the one who got him hooked on the ponies when he was all of 14, during a night at Capital EX. She wanted to see a race. They turned it into a weekly date. When he turned 18, Kyle was here a couple of times a week. It’s not gambling if you know you’re going to win. “I love it,” he says.

But Kyle is a husband now. Wife Nicole doesn’t mind much when he comes home with a pocketful of hundreds. But he also has a new baby girl, five-month-old Kaja. With a family comes responsibility. With responsibility comes a major cutback on gambling. His future isn’t only his own now. The trouble with being an adult is that you’re expected to act like one.

A tournament is different, special. You’re not trying to beat the odds. You’re trying to beat fellow competitors. That makes winning even more rewarding. It’s Kyle who will invest 50 or 60 hours watching tapes of previous races between now and July 11. He is one bettor who knows how to read a program. “If a horse racing program was a textbook, I’d be a lawyer,” he laughs.

The standardbreds are his favourite breed. Despite the uncertainty, “I want to own one. That’s my next major purchase,” he says. He has notebooks full of information. He has a clue. It’s not about picking the name for Kyle Radawetz.

For anyone interested in the tournament, there are still spots open. Go to www.thehorses.com and follow the links to pre-register. Consider yourself warned, though. Randy and Kyle will be there.

Scott Haskins writes in the Northlands racing program. This column appears July 3.

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