The management at Rocky Mountain Turf Club may want to take a look at a regular Monday night race date next year, as the six races that ran drew a handle of near $130,000. They ran Monday night because last Monday was a rain-out, so they added the day to this weekend. The three days of racing drew a handle of over 300,000, which is a huge increase over last year.
The highlight race of the weekend was the Alberta Bred 3 year old stakes race. Colten Mead had four of the five horses in the field and finished top four with all four of them. Ironically, the longest shot of the four he had was, "The Truth Project", ridden by Juan Apango, who won the race by over three lengths, defeating the big favourite, "Desposito", who was ridden by Trevor Simpson.
In comparison to the veteran trainers at Rocky Mountain Turf Club (some would say grizzled), Colten Mead looks like he might be thirteen years old. In reality, Colten is in his twenties and has aspirations of making a life-long career out of training race horses.
Colten is the son of Brad Mead, who has trained horses at Rocky Mountain Turf Club for the past few years, and has now turned the primary training duties over to Colten. Colten says his first exposure to horses was the day he was born and he has had a love for the beautiful animals ever since. Colten first got into the horse racing game six years ago. His dad, along with Alan Brown, claimed a horse and Colten's life was about to change in a big way. Colten became an assistant trainer for his father, who then claimed, "Ma's Miracle Run", along with a few other horses. Two years later, "Ma's Miracle Run" became Colten's first lifetime win as a trainer earlier last year. Colten is currently training over a dozen horses.
Colten says long days and short nights will not deter him from his aspirations of being a year-round, full-time trainer. He admits there have been a few moments in his mind when he starts to wonder if it's worth it, but then he has a win and everything is beautiful again.
When asked what advice he would give to someone thinking of training race horses, Colten says to be prepared for lots of work, long days and short nights thinking about what more you can do for your horses. He loves every second of it.