Jody Jamieson remembers how his Maritime roots led him to the top of the sport at Woodbine Mohawk Park.

by Melissa Keith

On Aug. 3, Jody Jamieson reached a rare milestone at Woodbine Mohawk Park, when he became the first Canadian-based driver to hit $150 million in purse winnings. As of Friday (Sept. 13), his lifetime driving earnings had reached $151,074,559 ($132,614,433 U.S.), and showed no sign of slowing down.

Speaking outside the Mohawk paddock on Friday night, the 47-year-old reinsman looked back on a track that helped shape his career from an early age.

“Some of my favorite memories are from Sackville Downs,” he told HRU, naming the defunct Nova Scotia half-mile being celebrated today (Sept. 15) at Truro Raceway in Nova Scotia. “We had one of the first barns on the left, with a big haymow, one of those big bank barns. I think it was just inside the [backstretch] gate.”

Jamieson’s father, Carl Jamieson, was a prominent trainer/driver at Sackville Downs prior to the suburban track’s closure in 1985. In 2006, Carl’s decades-long rise in the sport earned him the O’Brien Award of Horsemanship. Jody called Jeremys Boy (p, 5, 2:00.2h; $76,362) Carl’s “first decent horse.”

The younger Jamieson aspired to become a driver.

“I always wanted to do it,” Jody said.” I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to do it.”

Long before he was able to make a career in the sulky, he raced other aspiring drivers — on foot.

“I remember running on the backstretch; we had a little ‘track,’ me and Heath Campbell, Scott McCain,” He said, naming some other younger horsemen with roots going back to Sackville Downs.

Jody also apologized for not remembering the names of everyone that he ran with.

“There were a couple of other guys there too. We had ‘trotters’ and ‘pacers.’ If you were trotting, you had to run with your knees higher. I was the youngest of those guys, so they had to sometimes not try as hard when I was racing with them, but there were some pretty big races on the backstretch, on that fence. Dad would jog by [with a horse], and we’d be running back and forth between races, with whips in our hands, like we were driving our own horses.”

Between real races on Friday night at Mohawk, Jamieson laughed about another memory from Sackville Downs.

“I remember trying beer for the first time, sitting on the stairs in the barn at Sackville Downs,” he said. “I thought it was the worst thing in the world. It was out of one of those little stubby bottles, remember those?”

Carl was listed to drive Sunday (Sept. 15) at Truro Raceway, in a special event (race 8) for former Sackville Downs drivers.

“I kind of wish he wasn’t driving, but he loves that,” Jody said. “He was pumped to go back there and bump shoulders with the guys that he used to, you know, bump wheels with on the racetrack. I’m a little bit devastated that I’m not there.”

Jody, a two-time World Driving Champion (2001 and 2011), said he remembered seeing drivers from Greg Peck to Dave Carey enjoy success at the Lower Sackville, NS track.

“I was a big fan of Doug Walsh,” he said, naming the driver associated with Maritime champion Winners Accolade (p, 5, 1:57.3; $234,853). “He was probably one of my favorites.

“So that was our start in harness racing, other than sitting on a bucket outside the gate of Truro [Raceway], where you had nowhere to go. There was a guy who wouldn’t let us [kids] in, somebody who was just doing his job, right?

“We moved to Waterdown, ON, 38 years ago this Boxing Day. I was 10. I got my groom’s license when I got to Ontario, so I was allowed in the paddocks in Ontario.”

That family tradition carries on today. Jody’s 13-year-old son, Jett, recently earned praise from grandfather Carl for paddocking Ontario Sires Stakes Gold winner Fifth And Five (p, 2, 1:51.4; $107,903) at Mohawk on Aug. 31.

Despite growing up at Maritime and, later, Ontario tracks, Jody said he never anticipated that he would one day drive horses for a living at Woodbine Mohawk Park, let alone reach career pinnacles like winning the 2006 Dan Patch Rising Star Award and being voted a three-time O’Brien Driver of the Year (2007, 2009, 2011).

“No, I don’t think anybody ever thinks of that,” he said.

His first drives came on Sept. 4, 1994 at the Paris, ON fair, with J M Skinny (p, 4, 2:01.1h; $8,884) in two heats, plus maidens Clayborn Chessy (p, $274) and Miche Lamont ($192). He went winless in the four drives, but a small personal victory allowed him to even compete.

“I was only 18, and I didn’t actually have a driver’s license,” he told HRU. “I just told them I had a license, and I drove. Then I went to Ohsweken to race at the fair, and they came down and told me I couldn’t drive. The judges realized I had no license.”

That kind of boldness has served him well in his career.

“People have been telling me, ever since I was old enough to actually think I wanted to be a driver, that, ‘Oh, you’re too big to be a driver,’” Jody said. “So, I want to thank all those people who said that, because it just motivated me to be the best that I could be. I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve just been successful at it, and I love it.”

He returned to the paddock, and moments later, drove 2-year-old trotting filly Medley Seelster (2, 1:55.3s; $134,599) to a gutsy front-end victory in her 1:56.4s Champlain Stake division.