Alberta’s Mid Summer Classic Saturday afternoon at Calgary’s Century Downs certainly didn’t disappoint.
The $89,160 Gord and Illa Rumpel for three-year-old fillies and the $97,220 Ralph Klein for three-year-old boys both resulted in mesmerizing photo finishes and deep stretch duels.
Terrible Custard, sent away at 7-2 won the Rumpel in the final strides holding off 1-2 favourite Pup, who had the lead at the top of the stretch, lost that lead but then resiliently came back on but fell a neck short.
Vladdy G nailed Edwin Hanover at the wire in the Ralph Klein Memorial.
The Rumpel and Klein are two of Alberta harness racing’s top races.
Both horses won despite losing their cover early.
“I’m very happy,” said Terrible Custard’s owner and breeder Edmonton’s Lorne Duffield, a fixture in Alberta racing for over 30 years.
“I thought Terrible Custard was going to lose it when Pup came back on but Terrible Custard said ‘No way,’ said Duffield, who won the thriller by a head.
“She’s a star,” Duffield said of the daughter of venerable sire Custard the Dragon out of his mare, Remember Terror.
The mile went in 1:54 2/5 after a half mile in :56 seconds flat.
Pup, who came into the Rumpel with four straight wins, has still never finished worse than second in eight career starts.
“I’ve lost races that way and I’ve won races like that,” said Duffield, who owns four Boston Pizza franchises.
“Today I won one.”
Trained by Rod Hennessy and driven by his son, Mike, the latter said that when Terrible Custard makes the lead she is prone to looking around.
“The race wasn’t over. I had to remind my horse that,” said Mike.
“My filly was letting go but she’s super tough. She just wouldn’t let Pup go by,” he said.
“Her job wasn’t done.”
Mike said Terrible Custard is quiet and unassuming in the barn.
“She spends most of her day sleeping. But when it’s race time she’s a bear. She wants to catch everyone.”
Terrible Custard and Pup each won divisions of the Rumpel eliminations last week with Terrible Custard going in 1:53 3/5 and Pup winning in a very easy wire-to-wire time of 1:54 3/5.
“It was a great horse race,” said Rod of Saturday’s Rumpel.
“Two top fillies battling it out down the stretch.
“Flush Pup. That was the plan and it worked out,” Rod said as Pup came first over down the backstretch and cleared when Josies Joules, who was parked a long way, tired.
That left Terrible Custard, who had been following Pup, without cover.
It didn’t matter. Terrible Custard simply kept motoring on.
Duffield, who has been confined to a wheelchair since 2015 after four spinal surgeries, watched the Rumpel on his home computer.
“For a local guy to have a local horse that I bred win this particular race is very satisfying.
“I buy Alberta breds - one year I bought 17 horses at the Alberta Yearling Sale - I race Alberta breds and for a while bred Alberta breds.
“That’s the great thing about horse racing. You have some lows but you have great highs when you win.
“Honestly I didn’t think we could beat Pup,” said Duffield, who has owned many stakes races with a ton of good horses. “Really I was just hoping to finish second to Pup.”
Duffield, 77, who won his first stakes race in 1995 - the Harvest Gold, with Samantha Lee - also owns superstar Shark Week, who has won over $600,000 and a startling 69 races. Seventeen of those wins came consecutively.
One of them came in June of 2023 when he paced in 1:49 2/5 at Calgary’s Century Downs - the first horse in Western Canada to pace a mile in under 1:50.
“I could have sold Shark Week many times but I wanted to support Alberta.
“Shark Week, who has a big heart, is a freak.”
The Rumpel trophy was presented by Shirley McClellan, who has always been a big supporter of horse racing. She was appointed Deputy Premier and Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development in 2001.
In 2004 McClellan was elected to her sixth and final term as Member of the Legislative Assembly.
She resigned her seat in the legislature on January 15, 2007, the same day that former premier Ralph Klein resigned his.
Speaking of Klein, who was also passionate about harness racing, his Memorial race on Saturday was an equal thrilling race when Vladdy G mowed down Edwin Hanover in the final strides to also win by a neck.
Getting away third, Vladdy G pulled behind Edwin Hanover who had moved to the lead. That left Vladdy G without cover exactly as what happened in the Rumpel. But like Terrible Custard, who gutted it out holding off Pup, Vladdy G was also equal to the task getting by Edwin Hanover by a neck late in the stretch.
“He had to do most of the work,” said Vladdy G’s trainer and driver Logan Gillis to post race interviewer Jackson Wittup.
“But he got it done.”
Owned by St. Albert’s Todd Teolis, relatively new to the sport, Vladdy G won in 1:53 3/5 after fractions of :27 4/5, :57 3/5 and 1:25 1/5.
Teolis went to the track for the first time in 2024.
“I thought it might be fun even though I didn’t know the first thing about horse racing.
“I bet $20 on a 26-1 longshot and won $550. I thought this is pretty easy.”
The second favourite at 5-2, Vladdy G paid $7.60 to win.
“He’s everybody favourite in the barn,” said Gillis, originally from Cape Breton, who comes from a horse racing family - his grandfather, Donald, drove; his father, Rod, drove and he’s also got an uncle, Danny, who still drives. So do some of his cousins.
But Logan took a long time to get into harness racing. Instead he worked as a pipe fitter for 10 years in Fort McMurray, Alberta.
“The money was good,” Gillis told Horse Racing Alberta a couple of years ago explaining why he waited so long to follow in his family’s footprints.
But when the job he was working at shutdown because of Covid, Gillis went to Balzac, just outside of Calgary, and helped out Dave Kelly, also from Nova Scotia, who is one of Alberta’s top trainers and drivers.
“I never left. I guess you could say I took a chance,” said Gillis. “I had a trade. I never really thought harness racing was my future.”
He didn’t drive in his first race until September 12, 2020. But he was good right from the beginning winning that race with Kootenay Lager, a bottom claimer and the only horse he had in his barn.
Kootenay Lager, who Gillis bought for $4,000 from Rod Hennessy, was named Alberta’s claimer of the year in 2022.
Gillis was named Alberta’s Rising Star the same year.
Races like the Klein show exactly why.
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Inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2017.
Author: The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty.