Two pairs of trials will be run Thursday at Canterbury Park qualifying quarter horses for finals on Aug. 20. Races 1 and 2 at 400 yards will send the 10 fastest 3-year-olds to the $36,675 Canterbury Park Quarter Horse Derby while 2-year-olds compete at 350 yards in races 3 and 4 to determine 10 finalists for the $59,400 Northlands Futurity. Both races have history dating back to 1986, the first season the Shakopee, Minn. racetrack held a quarter horse meet.
Ding Dang Dulce, winner of the 2025 Northlands Futurity, is favored in the opening race for trainer and owner Haley Hobbs. The 3-year-old has experience at the 400-yard distance with trials wins
at Remington Park and Lone Star Park. Hobbs also owns and trains Wf Tuff as Diamonds in the second race. Fernando Fonseco-Soto will ride both Hobbs’ entries.
Jason Olmstead, who has won 11 consecutive quarter horse training titles and is leading in wins this season, has six of the 14 entered in the derby trials. Olmstead has won the Canterbury Park Quarter Horse Derby the past three years. Holliewood faces Ding Dang Dulce in the first race. The two met in the 2025 Northlands with Ding Dang Dulce proving a neck better. Holliewood enters Thursday’s trial with one start this year, a troubled fifth in a Prairie Meadows allowance on June 28. Armando Alvidrez, top jockey the last two seasons, rides Holliewood for Olmstead as well as multiple graded stakes winner Uncle Redheads in race 2. Uncle Redheads, likewise trained by Olmstead, has won seven of 14 career starts and earned $250,287, more than the rest of the second-race field combined.
Olmstead also holds a strong hand in the Northlands Futurity as trainer of 10 of the 19 entered.
“We have some very nice babies that are doing well coming into the trials,” Olmstead said.
Sheza a Sugar Momma, a Minnesota bred filly owned by Tom Maher and Paul Luedemann and trained by Olmstead, has two futurity wins at Canterbury already this summer.
“Sheza a Sugar Momma speaks for herself,” Olmstead said. “Two stakes wins on the meet so far. I don’t think we’ve seen her best yet and she has some gas left in the tank.”
The filly is the likely favorite in race 3 and will be ridden by Olmstead’s 16-year-old son Ryder Olmstead who has been aboard in her three career races.
“We have a few others that are stakes placed already. So even though the number of entries is smaller than usual we feel we have a very competitive group of babies,” the trainer said.
Ourrelentlessdynasty and Livin D Dream, who completed the Olmstead trifecta behind Sheza a Sugar Momma in the July 23 MQHRA Stallion Auction Futurity, are also in that race.
Maher, the track’s historical leading owner by wins and purses earned, has outright or part ownership in nine entrants including Daylynn, an Olmstead trainee in the fourth race, who was a late
supplement to the trials.
“We supplemented Daylynn because the filly ran a very impressive maiden race deserving a chance at a stake race,” Olmstead said. “We let her mature and waited on her a bit this spring and she
really came into herself. It showed with her easy win.”
Maher employs Olmstead as well as Tyler Stein who trains seven of the Northlands entrants including five for Maher.
Racing begins Thursday at 5:10 p.m. CT. The four quarter horse races are followed by six thoroughbred races.