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By all definitions, Oct. 12, 2008, was a good day for Larry Chappell. He was standing in the winner’s circle for the $25,000 Breeders Crown with his horse, R Es Mary, who had just stamped herself as the best two-year-old female racehorse east of Montreal. After nearly not qualifying for the championship race, she now stood victorious in front of a crowd of 2,000 people. It was a far cry from what Chappell had expected when he bought his first horse three years earlier.
The now 51-year-old Charlottetown, PEI resident is a contractor with his own business, Chappell Construction. He gets his materials from Metro Building Supplies, a company owned by Don Smith and his son Peter, who have owned horses for decades. Larry was talking to Peter one day and told him he was interested in getting a racehorse, even though he didn’t know anything about the business. Chappell had always dabbled in different hobbies (owning drag cars, stock cars and motorcycles) and the idea of having a racehorse appealed to him.
In the fall of 2005, he joined up with Don, Peter, and their partner (potato farmer Gerald Morrissey) and bought a yearling filly named Woodmere Britestar. They paid $4,700 for her at the Atlantic Classic Yearling sale in Charlottetown, where over 120 of the 400 Standardbred racehorses born every year in Atlantic Canada are sold.
The group turned the horse over to veteran trainer Earl Smith to get her ready for the following year’s harness racing season. Smith is a winner of over 2,000 races and consistently prepares some of the region’s best young horses.
Once a horse is bought as a yearling, it’s taken to a racetrack or training centre to be broke to harness. Harness keeps the race bike or jog cart, used for racing and training respectively, attached to the horse. Each horse is different, so they all respond differently to the harness, but once they get used to it, they begin training for races.
During a recent 7:00 am visit to Smith’s stable in Charlottetown, I found the 60-year-old plying his trade like he has been full-time for over 40 years. With the smell of straw in the crisp spring air, I grabbed one of the buckets of horse feed hanging on the stall doors and opened the first gate. The horse inside stared at me, then came pushing his nose against my shoulder trying to see what I had for him. I dumped the contents in and kept going to feed the rest. After that’s done, every horse is taken out to have their stall cleaned and fresh bedding put in. Then it’s exercise time.
This doesn’t always go so smoothly. One day at this stage, I went into a stall to put a halter on the horse (Mr. Pogge) so I could stand him in the aisle, hook him to the two chains on the wall so he couldn’t walk away, and put his harness on – but step one wasn’t in that horse’s plans. When I walked up to him in his stall with his head in the corner, he wheeled around at full speed, hugged the outside wall and ran out the door before I could catch him and get his halter on in the aisle. Smith just laughed. “He’s rearing to get at it today,” he said.
