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Charette-Hill Claims QH Title

Maybe someone will give Stacy Charette-Hill a dictionary for Christmas or another upcoming occasion appropriate for gift-giving. She sure could use one. She has simply run out of adjectives. Charette-Hill, the top quarter horse trainer in Shakopee this meet, repeatedly falls short of ways to describe what she thinks of Canterbury Park and how she would […]

Fillies Race for Hope

Pink hats, dresses, flowers, horses. Even little girls in pink wings. The starting gate was festooned in pink, and the scroll designating the type of race on the tote board television screen was the same color. It was Fillies Race for Hope day at Canterbury Park, an annual event to raise awareness and money for the support […]

Mister Mardi Gras in Mile

The long awaited rains finally arrived Saturday morning, bringing to mind once more the time-worn admonition – be careful of what you wish for. Horsemen, riders and even track management had hoped for rain to brighten up the yellowing turf course that was hardening day by day the past few weeks. With two premier races […]

Savoring the Moment

The horses had been checked, watered, grazed and mudded down, so a weary husband and wife, still tickled by the evening results, headed home to bed, dead tired, with just enough energy left to issue a few thanks. “Me and Randy were in bed talking,” said Stacy Charette-Hill. “I said that the good Lord has […]

Torres Arrives in a Big Way

When Jorge Torres went to work last January for the Stacy Charette-Hill barn outside Lexington, Okla., he was biting at the bit, eager as all get out to raceride. That notion was firmly implanted, or at least the seeds, when he was a youngster, perhaps three or four, and an uncle gave him a leg up […]

Clean Sweep in Northlands

The best laid plans of mice and men – and quarter horse trainers – don’t always play out as they’re intended. And sometimes they do… just not as expected. Let’s call this one the second no contest of the night. Friday night in the richest quarter horse race in track history, the Mystic Lake Northlands Futurity, […]

14,455 Enjoy Father’s Day Card

There is nothing like horse racing for destroying a person’s spirit one instant and then restoring it a few minutes later. These are the vicissitudes of a sport that can present more ups and downs, more highs and lows, than the Wild thing at Valley Fair. You can be a dejected loser one moment and an […]

Brooks Fields Stakes on Tap

When you walk into Churchill Downs the history of its most famous race is displayed along the upper reaches of the grandstand outside the paddock, one Kentucky Derby winner after another, starting with Aristides in 1875. Thoroughbred racing is empty without its history, without the stories of its great horses, sires and broodmares, jockeys, trainers […]