In the days and weeks leading up to Saturday’s $200,000 Canadian Derby the consensus was that this year’s 96th running at Century Mile was wide open.

“It’s a field of evenly matched horses,” said trainer Robbie Henson, who will saddle Pioneer Storm King - the second choice at 4-1 from post 10.

“It’s a mixed bag,” said Attack’s Alberta-leading trainer, Craig Smith, whose horse is listed as the third betting choice at 9-2 and who will start from post nine.

“It’s a complicated race with 11 pretty evenly matched horses.”

But that sentiment changed on Tuesday when the morning line was posted along with the 11 starters and post positions.

Take Charge Tom was installed as the heavy 8-5 favourite.

“I’m not surprised,” said Take Charge’s trainer Robertino Diodoro, who has 90 horses in training in Kentucky, Remington Park Oklahoma, Del Mar, Louisiana and this week two in Edmonton. (Diodoro is also saddling Western Canada champion Wood Ceiling who is listed at 12-1 on the Derby’s morning line.)

“That’s the number I would have predicted. He deserves to be the favourite,” said Diodoro after getting a very favourable post three.

But 8-5 in an 11-horse race? Did line-maker Josh Murphy, assistant racing manager at Calgary’s Century Downs make Diodoro 8-5 and Take Charge Tom 5-2?

Or is it a little of both?

Take Charge Tom has certainly accomplished almost everything. He won the Manitoba Derby by open lengths - even though he was disqualified and placed seventh for interference about a sixteenth of a mile from the starting gate when the stewards ruled Take Charge Tom came over too quickly and bothered several horses.

He also won the Manitoba Derby Trial, the Lost in the Fog Juvenile stake at Turf Paradise in Phoenix, the Riley Allison and the Mine That Bird stakes at Sunland Park in New Mexico and was a good third in the $300,000 Texas Derby at Lonestar.

“He’s as solid as his record,” said Diodoro of the Randy Howg owned horse who has five wins in eight starts.

“He’s a very good horse.”

Diodoro, winner of four Canadian Derbies, and one of North America’s top trainers, is just as solid and boasts a similar great record.

Before he left Alberta in 2014 to take on the best trainers in North America Diodoro was this province’s top trainer three times.

Now a winner of 3,327 races, Diodoro was also the leading trainer in Phoenix six times where he is also Turf Paradise’s all-time leading trainer - one year winning a record 147 races.

Diodoro, whose training career began at little Trout Springs just outside of Calgary, has also been the leading trainer at Oklahoma’s Will Rogers race track and twice at Canterbury Downs in Minnesota.

“It’s been a a heck of a ride,” said Diodoro, who never brags about his thoroughbred successes even though his career was highlighted by such things as winning six stakes races in a row.

“Every Saturday for six weeks we won the featured stakes race.

“It’s a lot of fun being the leading trainer. But it’s a lot of work too. It’s a team effort.

Humble, Diodoro didn’t have much to brag about when he left Alberta.

“I was 0-39 my first year at Turf Paradise; 2 for 63 in my second year and 5 for 90 my third year.”

As for Saturday, Diodoro seems to have Take Charge Tom finely honed as evidenced by the three-year-old’s recent work of :46 and change for half a mile.

“A very good work,” according to Diodoro.

But he’s not done.

“I’m going to give him a good, stiff gallop (on Wednesday). Then I’ll just stand him in the starting gate on Thursday and Friday.”

Diodoro said the horse he fears the most is Attack, who finished second in the Manitoba Derby but with the disqualification of Take Charge Tom, wasbmoved up to first.

“Attack is definitely the horse to beat,” Diodoro said of the horse who was purchased privately, broke his maiden at Woodbine, Toronto, and ran third - defeated by just three-quarters of a length - in a tough allowance race at Florida’s Gulfstream Park.

Working four furlongs last Friday Attack got the distance in a blazing :46 2/5.

Attack is third on the morning line. Starting from post 9, Attack is listed at 9-2.

“Attack is a solid closer and it looks like he will like the mile and a quarter distance - farther than any of the 11 entrants have gone,” said Smith.

“There looks to be quite a bid of speed in the Derby to run at.”

One of those speed horses is Take Charge Tom, who led every step of the way in the Manitoba Derby.

“Take Charge Tom doesn’t need the early lead,” said Diodoro. “Actually I think he prefers not to be on top early. I’d like to see him sitting somewhere around third going down the backstretch.

“Wood Ceiling will come from farther back,” Diodoro said of Take Charge Tom’s stablemate owned by Norm Tremblay and Janet Kropp, who paid $110,000 for him as a two-year-old.

Wood Ceiling won the Western Canada but then showed little in the Count Lathum that was won easily by Pioneer Storm King. “I think he’s got a chance too. You can just throw out his last race (when he finished a well-beaten third). The track was horrible that day.

“Wood Ceiling is training good and he looks good,” said Diodoro.

There are a couple of horses that could easily outrun their odds. Rondelito, who has won his last four races with the last three in stakes at Vancouver’s Hastings Park, is listed at 10-1; Accidental Genius, listed at 12-1, was a close second to Rondelito in his last two races and Putttingonthefoil, who has three wins and three seconds in his six career starts, is 8-1 on the morning line. Puttingonthefoil was the $46,000 sales topper at the 2023 Alberta Yearling Sale.

STOCK REPORT - There are three other stakes races on the 12-race card.

B.C. champion Avana and Alberta 2024 Horse of the Year Big Hug will duke it out in the $75,000 Northlands Distaff.

The $100,000 Dale Saunders Speed to Spare is a powerful field headed by last year’s Derby winner August Rain.

And the $100,000 Century Casino Oaks is led by even-money favourite Gee I’m Foxy, who has won her last three races by 27 lengths.

All told Saturday’s card is the richest in Alberta history.

Post time for the first race is 4:45 with the Derby expected to start at 9:15.

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