Thunder rolls, races cancelled Thursday night at Mohawk
Ontario Sires Stakes Gold leg rescheduled for next Thursday.
by Melissa Keith
There were originally 10 races carded for Thursday (July 24) at Woodbine Mohawk Park, including the $140,000 Ontario Sires Stakes (OSS) Gold leg 2 for the 2-year-old trotting colts and geldings and the first leg of the Whenuwishuponastar Series for 2-year-old pacing fillies. But after race 6, it wasn’t horses storming down the stretch in Campbellville, ON.
Early in the card, Jay, a daughter of Cattlewash—Jan, won the race 2 Whenuwishuponastar leg for driver Bob McClure, trainer Dr. Ian Moore, and owners Wilma Mackenzie and James MacKenzie of Ennismore, ON, and Paul Chapman of Oakville, ON. The $95,000 London Classic Sale graduate broke her maiden in the 1:55 front-end victory, her third career start after back-to-back OSS Gold races at Mohawk, in which she finished third on July 4 and seventh on July 17.
Coincidentally or not, Jay’s dam Jan swept the Whenuwishuponastar Series at Mohawk in 2017 for trainer Moore and driver Trevor Henry. She even took her 1:51.4 lifetime mark in the Aug. 10, 2027 final.
The guest racecaller for the night, filling in for Chad Rozema, was Shannon “Sugar” Doyle, well-known as the voice of The Raceway at Western Fair. On Friday (July 25), he said that he didn’t notice any unusual weather as he was driving to Mohawk.
“The drive from London was pleasant, clear and sunny all the way with a bit of wind gusting,” Doyle said. “Traffic moved along well, too.
“I never even checked the weather reports on my phone throughout the day. I was just happy to have an opportunity to fill in at the big track. Making it to the track safely and starting working were plans A and B.”
Leading up to the 6:35 p.m. post time, there was nothing that would suggest a weather-related cancellation later that night.
“The track and weather were fine when I first arrived at Woodbine Mohawk Park,” Doyle said. “The flags in the infield revealed that horses would likely face a slight headwind through the stretch and into the first turn when racing would get underway.”
Race 7 was the OSS Gold event, with a strong field of 11 colts and geldings. As the feature race drew nearer, so did storm clouds, captured in ominous detail by track photographer Clive Cohen. But through the earlier races, there was little indication of the impending need to cancel.
“Distant thunder may have rumbled a bit as I called races 5 and 6, although I couldn’t be too sure, as I’m pretty good at tuning out sounds around me while calling races,” Doyle said. “For me, I saw no lightning until the weather delay came up prior to race 7.”
After Brett MacDonald drove Always B Sweetest to a win in race 6, race 7 was delayed. There was no clear sign of the impending delay; earlier races essentially went off as scheduled.
An OSS media release stated that a thunderstorm came on suddenly just as the rookie trotters were about to leave the Mohawk paddock for the race ٧ post parade. Doyle agreed that the atmospheric change happened without prior warning.
“It was business as usual for me there [calling races 1 through 6], until the weather delay came up [before race 7]… I honestly couldn’t say how long that delay was before the cancellation was announced [by AGCO racing officials],” Doyle said.Í
Time stood still as Doyle waited in the booth. The AGCO judges made their decision — in conjunction with the horsepeople — after 40 minutes, at 9:45 p.m. Lightning storms were cited as the reason for the cancellation.
The guest racecaller said that he was back in his car for the drive home “shortly after 10 o’clock” that night, encountering conditions quite different from his drive to Mohawk.
“With the bad weather, plus an unexpected detour from the 401 [highway] for construction, it was after midnight when I did get back to London,” he said.
On Friday (July 25), a media release from the OSS program stated that Gold leg 2 for the 2-year-old male trotters would be rescheduled for Thursday (July 31) and will be raced as originally drawn for the postponed July 24 race, as a regular race with pari-mutuel betting.
