Jason Olmstead Wins Another Training Title
By Rebecca Roush With 21 wins this season, trainer Jason Olmsted certainly knows his way to the winner’s circle. This will be his fourth straight champion quarter horse training title at Canterbury Park. The Olmstead barn is currently filled with 45 horses, but with the quarter horse portion of the meet concluding soon the 39-year-old […]
Tom Pouliot Has A Very Fast Quarter Horse
By Rebecca Roush Growing up on a five-acre hobby farm in Maple Grove, racehorse owner Tom Pouliot had always been around the sport. His parents owned racehorses and others that he would barrel race. They started out racing the horses at “small bush tracks,” at the Anoka County Fairgrounds, and in Lake Elmo and Wadena, […]
Scheckel Knows How To Make A Shekel
BY JIM WELLS One of his trainers sizes it up simply as a numbers game. Or in metaphorical terms, if you shoot a lot of bullets you’re apt to hit the bulls-eye sometimes. There is more to the analysis than that, however, because Thomas J. Scheckel has been a horseman for as long as he […]
Zoes Sassy Miracle Fastest in NCQHRA Futurity Trials
Four trials were held today for 350-yard $45,000 North Central Quarter Horse Racing Association Futurity final that will be run August 11. Zoes Sassy Miracle was the fastest qualifier, covering the distance in 17.699 for trainer Mark Barnes. Leading Q trainer Jason Olmstead will saddle five of the 10 two-year-olds that qualified. Robert Johnson qualified […]
A Win For A Minnesota Horse, Sports Fans
By Jim Wells Call it a flicker of hope, a spark in the ash of the campfire, a glimmer of light in a sea of darkness. Minnesotans were given a reason to raise their heads and applaud again on Sunday. At a sporting event. Just like that, the doubting Thomases of sportsdom stood and feted […]
A Small Package With Big Ambition
BY JIM WELLS It isn’t necessarily a sore spot but at some level she must grow weary every now and then when someone refers to her height. She’s been hearing it her entire life, grade school, high school and now in her professional career. Many of us might have lashed out by now after being […]
Northlands Brings Out The Best
By Jim Wells You’ve heard the advice in various forms and probably a couple of hundred times over the years….. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, diversify your investments…axioms that have worn thin, lost some of their influence simply through repetition over time. Sometimes, though, you don’t have a choice. Take the […]
Painted Dynasty Fastest Qualifier for Gopher State Derby
Painted Dynasty, trained by Jason Olmstead and ridden by Ry Eikleberry, was the fastest qualifier from three 400-yard trials held today. The final will be held June 9 with a purse of $34,150. QUALIFIERS Painted Dynasty Olmstead 20.18 Marfilmio Hanson 20.22 First of 15 […]
Canterbury Flavor In Prairie Meadows Stakes This Weekend
The Prairie Meadows quarter horse meet closes this week with racing Thursday through Saturday. The Friday card features four stakes races and Saturday’s evening program has nine including the Grade 1 Bank of America Challenge Championship with a $330,000 purse. Many of the stakes include horses that raced in Shakopee over the summer. The Grade […]
STATE STARS SHINE ON FESTIVAL DAY
BY JIM WELLS Steamy, muggy, humid. Or as mother used to say, “close.” Under those conditions, Canterbury Park conducted the 24th running of the Festival of Champions Sunday, an afternoon of racing restricted to Minnesota-bred horses and highlighted by a sensational two-year-old, a pair of full brothers who won the two quarter horse races, the […]