Cold Creek Standardbred heated up as Daniel Walker got creative
by Matthew Lomon
Daniel Walker was young when his family traveled to Shawville, QC, on summer holiday, but the memories of watching his great-uncle’s horses graze in the open field for hours on end remain etched in his mind.
“I pretty much sat on the rail fence until it was time to go home,” he said.
Walker, in his words, “always had a love for horses, but never had the opportunity as a young person to have one.”
While that desire to one day have a horse of his own remained as he got older, it eventually took a backseat to a career in automotive mechanical repair.
That all changed in 2006, when a chance encounter with a customer delivered the break Walker had long been searching for.
“I rebuilt starters and alternators, that’s what I did for a living,” he said. “One day, a gentleman brought in an alternator, and he was standing at the end of the bench talking while I was fixing it. He told me about this horse he had bought for $2,000, and how they had made about $6,000 in a month.
“I said, ‘Next time you get one of them, you better get me in on it.’ So, a couple of days later, he came back and said, ‘I bought us a horse.’”
Whether the laugh that followed was an expression of half-seriousness or a nod to the levity of the situation, Walker finally had his in – and a path to fulfilling his childhood dream.
Although, it wasn’t exactly clear at first.
The early years were fairly lean, defined mostly by older claiming-type horses that didn’t cash many checks and increasing responsibilities in his career outside of racing.
Despite the modest start, Walker bought a farm in Grafton, ON, and started up as a cow-calf operator.
The hopeful horseman’s ambitions were dealt another blow when the Ontario government axed the slots-at-racetracks program in 2012.
“After the program ended, I brought the horses home and had them in the field,” Walker said. “At that time, I noticed the horses were quite expensive because a lot of people got rid of their broodmares, so there were a lot less around, but the price was up.”
Undeterred by the tough hand, Walker remained involved in racing, owning several horses and sending them out to different trainers.
The year prior, in 2011, Walker took it upon himself to obtain a trainer’s license, using it sparingly in the years that followed (36 starts between 2011-13).
His training scorecard ended up blank after 2013, not showing a single start on record – though, there was plenty going on behind the scenes.
The first transformative event came in 2013 when Walker met Debora Stokes.
“Deb and I, we’ve been together since then,” he said. “Her mom and dad were avid race fans. Her dad was a fan of thoroughbreds, and her mother was a fan of standardbreds.”
Today, Walker and Stokes co-own and operate Cold Creek Standardbred, a venture they formally started in 2017 after consolidating the horses they had each bred under one shared entity.
One of the horses that Walker brought into the equation, a seasoned mare named Tymal Black Satin, was pivotal in getting the Cold Creek brand not just off the ground, but well stocked, too.
In 2015, the now 24-year-old retired pacer birthed the first racehorse to don the Cold Creek moniker, Cold Creek Lacey, who earned over $108,000 during her 138-start career.
Four more foals followed Lacey: Cold Creek Felipe (2019), Cold Creek Guerero (2020), Cold Creek Fuego (2022), and Cold Creek Cali (2023).
With their roster of pacers growing every year — each one bearing a name, often in Spanish, with a connection to their sire — Walker got creative this past spring to keep costs down.
“Tim Gillespie, who lives down the road, had a small barn,” Walker said. “He’s got a track, and he wasn’t using the small barn, so I asked him if I could rent the barn. At that time, I was just trying to put miles into a couple of horses to save some money.”
After three weeks of sticking to that routine, Walker was then approached by Gillespie, who proposed a different cost-saving solution.
“One day he just said to me, ‘Why are you paying people to train your horses when you can do it yourself?’” Walker said. “And I said, ‘Well, I don’t really know that much about these younger horses.’”
Gillespie, an accomplished horseman himself, wasn’t satisfied with that response.
“He asked me if my license was still active, and I said, ‘I’ve been paying it, but I’m not sure if it is,’” Walker said. “Tim’s daughter-in-law is Emelia [Gillespie], who is married to Jim [Gillespie], the race secretary at Mohawk. I guess Tim got a hold of her to see if my license was still valid and she said it was.
“From there, it was very much, ‘Well, I’ve gone this far, I guess I better finish the deal and train a couple.’”
With the encouragement from his friend and neighbor came words of wisdom – or something close to it.
“Every time he gave me advice, he always said, ‘You’ve got to remember, I’ve been wrong just as many times as I’ve been right, so take it from there and I hope it works out for you,’” Walker said with a laugh.
Joining the conditioner community had led to great success for Walker, who with Stokes, has amassed a 17-5-7 line for north of $205,000 in prizes from 60 starts this year.
Responsible for strong output are five Cold Creek competitors, captained by Cold Creek Fuego.
The daughter of Sunfire Blue Chip—Tymal Black Satin authored a standout 9-3-0 line across 15 starts this season, headlined by a sweep of the Harvest Series for Ontario sired 3-year-old fillies.
“That was quite exciting because nobody got her to the races, we did that ourselves,” Walker said.
What made the feat even more remarkable was its complete surprise.
“She trained down to about 2:20, and she was very rough at 2:20,” Walker said. “She couldn’t go any faster. We had her x-rayed at King City. [Dr.] Nathalie Cote went over and didn’t see anything wrong. She said to give her six weeks and try her again, but we gave her about four months.”
The extended layoff didn’t provide the answers Walker and Stokes were looking for, as Cold Creek Fuego regressed further.
Running out of options, Walker thought of giving training one more try, and as he put it, “she never missed a beat.”
Rounding out Cold Creek’s active roster is Panther Hanover gelding Cold Creek Pantera, Cold Creek Espero, and a pair of Betterthancheddar bays in Cold Creek Nacho and Cold Creek Queso.
The latter, who was bred by Stokes in 2019, holds a special place in her heart.
“Queso’s never going anywhere; that’s Deb’s baby,” Walker said. “He’ll retire here at home when he’s done.”
For Walker, building a life in racing required a little luck and a lot of patience, but with Stokes by his side, he is reminded every day that the wait was all worthwhile.
“The two of us doing this at the age we are, building something together, and having fun doing it, has been incredibly rewarding,” he said.
