Randy Howg has threatened to quit owning thoroughbreds so many times he has lost track.

“I don’t have enough fingers to count how many times I said I was getting out,” said Howg, now one of the top owners in North America and who has Take Charge Tom ready to run in the August 23 Canadian Derby at Edmonton’s Century Mile racetrack.

“You get on a losing streak, things don’t go the way you expected, the bills build up…

“But horse racing just won’t let me go. I love the horses and the sport so much,” said Howg, who spent the summer of 1967 grooming for his uncle - trainer Phil Wiest - which was the beginning of Howg’s infatuation with horses.

“As far back as when I was six I loved to watch Phil’s horses run. It’s in my blood.”

Howg, 76, a sugar beet and cattle rancher, got his first race horse in 1986 when he claimed Uncle Dusty for $2,500. Uncle Dusty only won $9,130 from just two wins in 31 starts.

“Uncle Dusty didn’t win until his 14th start,” lamented Howg.

Ten days later Howg bought Aaron’s Quest for another song but that horse did no better. Aaron’s Quest also only won two races and his career earnings were just $6,410.

But Howg wasn’t about to give up even though it took him several years - 11 to be exact - to claim another one on July 5, 1997. That was Air Flight, who certainly did a lot better than his first two horses. Air Flight won $117,000 and 18 races.

Howg claimed Air Flight for $5,500.

And, while Aaron’s Quest and Uncle Dusty only raced in fairgrounds bush meets, Air Flight did his winning at A tracks - Edmonton and Calgary.

With Air Flight regularly finding his way to the winner’s circle, Howg was really hooked and began owning horses with many partners.

“I couldn’t afford all the horses I’ve owned by myself.”

Growing up poor, Howg scrimped and saved and “worked my ass off,” to put together $16,000 to buy his first piece of land in 1970 - a quarter section 100 Km outside of Lethbridge where he was born - the same year he got married to his wife Virginia, a farm girl, who would work the land alongside her husband driving a tractor.

“We were married young. Neither of us had any money. We were always broke; we always had debts.”

For shower presents Howg remembers getting a gallon of mustard - “They knew I loved mustard” - and a big chunk of baloney.

“The first year we were married we lived on baloney. We’d have baloney sandwiches for lunch and fried baloney for dinner,” said Howg.

The land he bought included a scrabbled farm house that didn’t have running water or even a bathroom. “We heated the water on the stove and used an outhouse,” said Howg.

Meanwhile, Howg kept buying more and more land using the collateral of the land he already owned to get money from Farm Credit, a lending institution. Howg mostly bought dry land and put irrigation into it.

In 1980 Howg had a house built for him and his wife, who has Multiple Sclerosis.

“Same spot as our first house. It wasn’t much but it had a toilet.”

Today, he owns one of the biggest sugar beet farms in all of Alberta. And land? Howg now owns 32 quarter sections (5,120) acres. Each quarter section is estimated to cost more than $2.5 million.

“I got into sugar beets in 1998. Before that I farmed canola, wheat, barley and peas.

“I worked hard for everything I’ve got,” said Howg, who was once nominated as Alberta’s best young farmer of the year, and now owns 300 head of cattle.

He has also owned many top thoroughbreds across North America. “I’m down to just eight horses this year but for many years I would have a dozen horses in training every year,” said Howg, a religious man who is forever thankful for what he has achieved.

“It’s a lot of fun to win races.”

When Howg claimed Air Flight at the suggestion of Wiest he gave him to an upstart young trainer named Robertino Diodoro, who had been training a couple of horses - one for his grandfather, Larry Matthews and two for prominent trainer Gene White at Trout Springs, a former small oval near Calgary.

Diodoro got 80 per cent of what White’s horses won; White got the other 20 per cent.

“It sounded like a good deal at the time,” said Diodoro, who has been one of North America’s leading trainers for many years.

“The math, however, didn’t exactly work. Eighty per cent of nothing is still nothing. There was just no money to be made. The purses were about $600. At the end of that summer I had to borrow money off my mom to pay the blacksmith.

That would change in a hurry - certainly in large part after Diodoro, who was also working for Rod Heggie on the side, was introduced to Howg at the suggestion of Phil Wiest.

Howg, whose dad Art owned a few horses, and Diodoro quickly teamed up to be a very formidable pair.

“Robertino is the only trainer I’ve ever had,” said Howg, who has owned an estimated 120 horses - all trained by Diodoro. “He’s like a second son to me. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

“He’s one of a kind and as solid as a person can be; he’s a true friend,” responded Diodoro, who was Alberta’s leading trainer three times before leaving for the big time in 2012.

Through the years Howg and Diodoro have had great success. Diodoro has won four Canadian Derbies: Great Escape (2022); Sky Promise (2018); Edison (2014) and Broadway Empire (2013). Howg has been a co-owner of two of them: Great Escape and Broadway Empire.

Great Escape is one of several top horses that Howg partnered up with cousins Rick and Clayton Wiest.

After winning the Derby by by open lengths over stablemate Red Knobs, Great Escape came back to Edmonton to win the Speed to Spare at Century Mile a year later.

Broadway Empire, who was the horse that kick started Diodoro, won his next race the $440,000 Oklahoma Derby. Then he ran in the Breeders’ Cup $1-million Dirt Mile.

Howg, whose first Canadian Derby horse was long shot Saskatchewan Derby winner Regal Randy in 2002, and Diodoro nearly won another Canadian Derby. In 2017 Chief Know It All, co-owned by Howg, crossed the finish line on top and after an inquiry lodged by Rod Cone, trainer of Double Bear, the stewards made the race official with Chief Know It All the winner. But after two years Queen’s Bench Justice June Ross reversed the decision and declared Double Bear the winner citing that Chief Know It All interfered with Double Bear in the stretch.

“It dragged on and on,” said Howg. “I didn’t want to fight it out in the courts. The stewards ruled in our favour and that’s how it should have ended. The stewards decision should be final.”

Chief Know It All wasn’t the only Derby horse Howg owned that was disqualified.

Two weeks ago on August 4, Howg’s Take Charge Tom, a horse he bred, crossed the finish line on top in the Manitoba Derby. But after a very lengthy delay , the stewards disqualified Take Charge Tom, the winner of five of his eight starts, for interference at the start when when he came over before clearing bothering several horses.

Attack, who is likely going to run in the Canadian Derby, was moved up to be the winner.

“That one hit me hard. I already had the trophy in my car,” said Howg. “But I’m not going to be a sore loser. Our jockey (Rasheed Hughes) maybe made a mistake. It was very disappointing. Seventy-five thousand dollars later my pockets were empty.

“And he won the race so easily.

“Winning is always important but you have to be a good sport too.

“There are a lot of ups and downs in horse racing.”

Chief Know It All and Take Charge Tom were the epitome of downs. But Howg has had a lot of ups too and is looking for more with Take Charge Tom set to run next in the Canadian Derby.

The list of top horses Howg has owned is staggering: Great Escape, who is still running has earnings of $529,000 for Howg and his partners; Broadway Empire, perhaps his most talented horse, who was purchased for just $25,000; Inside Straight, who, with earnings of over $813,000 is financially Howg’s best horse owning the winner of the $750,000 Oaklawn Handicap outright; Eternal Secrecy, who won 16 races including Calgary’s Teeworth Plate in 2003; Heroic Move, a winner of $914,000 who won the Casa Ford Sunland Park Stakes this spring and last year’s Zia Park Championship; Half Dome Dude, who won 19 races including nine of 11 in one span of time; Myopic, runner-up in the 2021 Canadian Derby after getting squeezed at the start; Arizona Sun, who won half of his 28 starts including nine stakes.…

The list goes on forever.

“It’s a lot of fun when you win a race,” said Howg, who also owns a couple of broodmares - Gorgeous Ginny, the dam of Take Charge Tom as well as an unraced two-year-old named Forty Twenty, who is by undefeated Candy Ride - and Arizona Sun.

“If you can minimize your losses it’s great. If you want to make money you don’t get into horse racing,” said Howg.

“You buy horses for the fun and for the sport.

“I’ve had wonderful memories and met a lot of great friends through horse racing.”

“We all get frustrated,” said Diodoro, who is 32nd in North America all-time for races won with 3,324 victories - more than Chad Brown and two behind legendary Bob Baffert.

“Everybody in this sport has had their hearts broken. You get depressed. But I can’t imagine doing anything else,” said Diodoro, who will also send Wood Ceiling, winner of the Western Canada Handicap, into the Derby.

“Every day I get up in the morning, jump out of my vehicle and walk into a barn full of horses.

“How does it get better than that?”

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Author: The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty.