Heliskier Rose To The Top
by Jim Wells They purchased the land 50 years ago and at various times it teemed with horses, but now when she looks out the back door there is only one. He is lord of a spacious paddock and moves slowly from place to place, grazing as he does, easy-going and amiable as always in […]
Canterbury Park Hall of Fame to Add Four Members
The Canterbury Park Hall of Fame Committee today announced the Class of 2018 inductees. The four newest members, who will be honored in a Sept. 1 ceremony, include jockey Dean Butler; Minnesota HBPA President and racehorse owner and breeder Jack Walsh; quarter horse breeders Rodney and Sylvia Von Ohlen; and retired Minnesota-bred racehorse Heliskier. These […]
Magnificent Minnesota Moms Part 1
By Noah Joseph The feature races on Saturday’s card are the Minnesota Oaks and Minnesota Derby. These are the biggest races for Minnesota-bred three-year-olds, each offering an $85,000 purse. With the best state bred three-year-olds running, it seemed appropriate to look at some of the best Minnesota-bred dams in recent memory. Some of them have […]
Opening Night Upset
by Jim Wells You’ve heard it time and time again. There are no sure things in horse racing. That’s why they run the races. How true. How true, and Minnesota racing fans saw the axiom played out before their very eyes on the opening night of racing Friday, in the very stakes race of […]
2013 Meet Closes with Significant Increases
Canterbury Park’s 69-day racing season, the longest since 2006, concluded on September 14 with gains in average handle and attendance. Off-track wagering, dollars bet on Canterbury races at other tracks and through internet sites, increased by 46.7 percent while average daily on-track wagering was up 4.8 percent. Average daily attendance was 6,656, a Canterbury Park […]
2013 Champions Determined
The skies were forbidding and dark much of the day, but the finish was one of the most colorful in Canterbury Park history as the 2013 race meet came to a stirring conclusion. The weather was really not a factor until light rain began falling midway through the card. It was somewhat heavier by the […]
2013 Festival Records & Repeats
The Festival of Champions has always been, from Day One, one of the best days of the race meet in Shakopee. Crowds, enthusiasm and competitive races are the order of the occasion. The Festival annually is one of the grandest days of the summer, including Sunday’s rendition that drew a crowd of 15,023 and record-setting off-track […]
Bell Out Rest of 2013 Meet
Injuries sustained during a morning workout last week will sideline Canterbury Park Hall of Fame jockey Derek Bell for the remainder of the meet. Bell suffered a broken kneecap and wrist while returning a horse to the barn last Sunday morning. Bell was unavailable for comment but his agent, Chad Anderson, said Friday that X-rays have […]
Heliskier Back on His Game
Horse racing has more than its share of stories that tug at the heartstrings, bring tears to your eyes and leave otherwise stout human beings weak in the knees. It doesn’t take million dollar colts and fillies or regally-bred champions, either. When you’ve invested much of what you have – even in an expensive claimer – […]
20,291 Enjoy Extreme Day
You could have looked high and low and not found anything ordinary about the day or its trappings. It was extreme in every sense of the word, from the camels, ostriches and zebras to the crowd itself. Extreme Day on Saturday evoked scenes from the 1980s. The extremely large crowd was a Canterbury Park record […]
