The nine lives of Mark MacDonald
In yet another comeback, the driver has gone from “knocking on Heaven’s door” three times to returning to Woodbine Mohawk Park and his native Canada.
by Melissa Keith
To interview Mark MacDonald on Friday the 13th (of March) is oddly appropriate, if coincidental. The star-crossed driver is building up to a comeback from his most recent accident and a complicated recovery.
“I’ve just got a little pinched nerve in my back, that’s all,” he said. “Nothing too serious. I broke three transverse process in my back last year at Yonkers… I went through a few things there.”
The Canadian native has been based in Goshen, NY for the past decade, while driving in races both in and outside of the state. Despite his skill level — MacDonald was Canada’s 2005 and 2006 O’Brien Driver of the Year and has won 6,743 of 49,859 career starts — he has been injured in multiple accidents on the track.
“I was hurt Oct. 24 [2024]… I broke my back and a rib and punctured my lung,” MacDonald said. “I was beat up a little bit. And then I came back in April [2025], and then I got in another accident in May, at Yonkers, when a 2-year-old pacing colt broke my hand and I fractured my tibia.”
The sidelined driver had been working out prior to being interviewed, cross-training in preparation for his return to Mohawk.
“I haven’t touched a horse in six months, maybe, probably since the last time I drove,” he said. “I was in the hospital. That accident at Yonkers, I broke my hand and they missed [diagnosing] the leg [injury]. They thought it was my back. I did too.
“I was a little sore. I didn’t know. I hit the ground pretty hard, and I was just coming back from breaking my back, so I was a little sore on my left leg and I had a little tingling.”
A severe reaction to a contrasting agent used for his MRI scans complicated MacDonald’s recovery.
“I had a huge hematoma on my left hip,” he said. “It kind of went away and then it came back, which is odd. I ended up going to the emergency room.”
He was diagnosed with a fractured tibia.
“I had a reaction to the [MRI] dye and my kidneys literally stopped working,” he said. “I didn’t know, but all summer I didn’t feel good on and off. I didn’t know if maybe I had a concussion… One ankle was swelling up all the time, and I was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’”
MacDonald said that by October 2025, he was rundown from reduced kidney function and a blood pressure medication he had been prescribed as a result.
“In October [2025], I had to just step away,” he said of his extended absence from the Yonkers driving colony. “I literally felt like I was going to die.
“I was eight days in the hospital, at the end of October… That’s the third time I was knocking on Heaven’s door.”
He quickly added that his other two brushes with mortality were, “the bad one at London in ‘03 and the bad one at Mohawk in ‘11.”
There were others, notably, “the bad one at Saratoga in ‘19 and the bad one at Yonkers in ‘25,” but like the proverbial cat, MacDonald joked that he still had “five or six” lives.
Conversation naturally veered toward his next chapter, to begin at the end of the month at Mohawk.
“To be honest, I just want to race,” said MacDonald, who relocated to drive primarily in the U.S. in 2012. “That’s kind of my home and my wife’s from there too. I was born in PEI and I lived there for 16 years, but I spent most of my life at Mohawk and around that area, in southwestern Ontario and all through there.”
In addition to a chance to spend time with his brothers and their families, MacDonald said the Ontario Sires Stakes program and prevalence of Grand Circuit races at Mohawk helped him make the decision to come back to Canada this year.
“I had a rough go in the last year and a half, racing at these little half-mile tracks in New York and getting beat up,” he said. “These tracks just beat the crap out of you down here. It takes you about six hours to get anywhere… I’m just sick and tired of driving in my car. Last year, I spent the whole summer either in my car or in the friggin’ emergency room.”
MacDonald added that he was not returning to Canada because of any negative feelings towards his adopted country.
“I like living in the States,” he said. “I have dual citizenship… but I’m really looking forward to racing and not having to drive like three or four hours every day in a car.”
The Ontario circuit appealed to him more than the unrelenting “hustle” of commuting from Goshen to Pocono to Yonkers or The Meadowlands and back, all in a single day.
“To do a Pocono-Yonkers doubleheader, forget about driving the horse, that’s five and a half hours in the car,” he said. “You’re back and forth; you just pass yourself on the highway. And if you don’t hustle like that, you know what? There’s lots of able bodies willing to take your spot. I’d rather just focus on one track and one circuit, and maybe do a little outside traveling. That’s fine.”
MacDonald turned 47 in December, putting life priorities a little more in perspective.
“I don’t mind hustle in the summertime, because it’s not as hectic… I don’t want to miss time with my daughter, to be honest, and that’s what happens, you know: It ends up you don’t see your kids for the whole summer, unless they come with you,” he said.
On the subject of family, Mark chuckled at the notion that it might take another MacDonald to challenge his younger brother, James, for the Mohawk and O’Brien driving crown.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to beat James, but I’ll gladly give it a try,” Mark said. “I’ll just be grateful for some opportunities, to be honest with you. I think that he’s the best driver in North America.
“I’m going to come back at a high level. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m getting in shape.”
Mark said he’s putting hard work ahead of luck on Friday the 13th. Despite an American focus in recent years, he has left an indelible mark catch driving at Canadian racetracks. In next week’s column, he looks back on his early career as a trainer, the road to Mohawk, and the people and horses he teamed up with for $107,327,359 in career purse earnings to date. The Mark MacDonald story is to be continued, in every sense.
