Before Carl Jamieson was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, the standardbred driver and horse trainer had already earned legendary status on and off the track.
His name is synonymous with championship horses and winning drivers, creating a family legacy in the sport.
But it didn’t come easy. From the backstretch to the homestretch, Carl’s ride to the winner’s circle has been nothing short of hard work, dedication and pure passion for the sport.
Well, that, and a little faith in risks worth taking.
“I always said work and luck; you have to work hard and have luck to be successful,” Carl said.
The odds may have been in his favour, but Carl is known as a self-made man. His illustrious career in harness racing was celebrated in August when the 62-year-old took his rightful place in history as an inductee to the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in the driver-trainer category.
And what a ride it’s been.
“I never thought this would happen to a kid from Wallace, Nova Scotia, a little fishing village,” Carl said. “And I never even dreamed of this happening.”
Carl’s work ethic is renowned by colleagues and horse owners alike.
“You probably won’t find any other trainer who works as hard as Carl. He is the consummate horseman,” said Larry Morrison, who together with his wife Joanne, has owned numerous horses with Carl since 1999.
“He can do anything that needs to be done at the barn, whether it’s shoeing a horse, fixing a stall, building a horse pool, and fixing the pipes. It doesn’t matter what it is, he can do it … he never stops,” Morrison said.
“I call it the ‘Legend of Carl Jamieson,’” jokes Carl’s son, Jody Jamieson, who at one point this summer was first in wins among all harness racing drivers in Canada.
“He just puts his mind to it and gets it done. He’s the most amazing man ever.”
Morrison, who is also a director on the board of the Standardbred Breeders of Ontario Association, lauds Carl’s talent for picking good horses.
“He can figure horses out if they can be figured out,” Morrison said, noting that in and of itself is a challenge. “He’s able to figure out the ones who have the talent. His record is a pretty impressive list.”
Carl credits the lessons he learned from his parents, who were involved in harness racing in Nova Scotia.
“My dad always had horses,” Carl said. “He bought the horses that somebody else couldn’t get to the races.”
Part intuition, part keen eye, Carl seems able to know when to take a risk on a horse if he sees something special in the animal.
“They just do everything right and they show you some speed … they have to show you some talent. You watch their gait. Everything goes together in a package,” Carl said.
“I study the [horse’s] cross,” he said. “You have to have the right cross. It has to be in the heart and head. If it’s not crossed right in the [blood] lines and you don’t have any speed, or if they have the right cross but it’s not in the heart or the speed, the horse won’t be a winner.”
He adds, “I buy a horse at the sale and I have to completely break them, train them and make them what they are … I have to teach the horse everything. That’s what trainers do.”
Carl and Morrison often travel to horse sales throughout North America, including a recent trip to Kentucky – and Morrison said those trips are great for watching the horse trainer in action.
“He’s great to go to a horse show with,” Morrison said, noting a horse need only pass Carl once before the experienced trainer has determined that animal’s value in the racing world, with a certainty that few question.
“He can certainly pick out a yearling. Carl will look at a foot and be able to tell if it is tipped the right or wrong way. He has a tremendous eye,” Morrison said.
“If you’ve ever been to a horse sale with Carl, it takes a long time because he is stopped by people who respect his opinion … He’s not afraid to help people out.”
Morrison respects Carl’s professional judgment.
“Certainly you always know where you stand with Carl – the first time, every time,” said Morrison. “If you have a horse that isn’t good enough, he’ll be the first one to tell you. We’re trying to race at a certain level here and he won’t string you along.”
In a high-stakes industry, Carl’s honesty and integrity are renowned.
With 950 training wins, with horses earning in excess of $22 million, history will record his undeniable success for selecting and developing young horses into champions.
In the 1980s and ‘90s, Carl earned more than 1,300 wins in the driver’s seat. Overall, the two-time World Driving Champion and three-time O’Brian winner (as Canada’s top driver) has driven in 37,782 races, winning 6,683. He has driven horses to purse earnings of over $100 million.
He is also a five-time winning trainer of Grand River Raceway’s signature race, the Battle Of Waterloo.
“It’s a pretty big accomplishment,” he says of the success with trotters and pacers. “We’ve had a lot of nice horses through the years in the Ontario Sires Stakes (OSS).”
One of his early favourites was Elegant Killean, who won O’Brien Awards for her two- and three-year-old seasons in ‘94 and ‘95, and is credited for helping Carl break open on the OSS scene. Appleoosa Hanover was another prized stakes winner.
Racing fans will remember the 2007 Breeders Crown winner and stallion Santanna Blue Chip. “He was a good horse,” Carl said.
Santanna Blue Chip would become the richest rookie pacer on the continent in 2007, with more than $900,000 earned. The horse also scored a major victory in the Governors Cup that same year, with the second place horse, Roberts Rage, another of Carl’s trainees, giving the trainer a sweep at the prestigious race.
“He was a really nice horse,” Carl said, noting Roberts Rage earned well over $300,000 as a two-year-old, much like another great horse in his stable, Captain Sir, who brought in $300,000. Both horses died at the age of three.
“Those are the heartbreakers, when they are really good horses and they die young. They both got sick,” said Carl.
Never forgetting his Maritime roots, one of Carl’s personal career highlights was his 2006 win of the Gold Cup and Saucer in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, driving Banner Yankee. Taking home the title on the east coast was a great reward.
“It’s not a lot of money, but it is good prestige,” Carl said.
His wife, Debbie, a native of Windsor, Nova Scotia, fondly recalls the East Coast pride that came with that win.
“Winning the Gold Cup and Saucer race, that was the one race you wanted to win no matter what, if you were growing up in the Maritimes,” she said.
No one in the racing world will forget Carl’s efforts to produce two Canadian harness racing champions – millionaire pacers Up the Credit (Canada’s Three-Year-Old Pacing Colt of the Year in 2011) and Warrawee Needy (Canada’s Two-Year-Old Pacing Colt of the Year in 2011).
This past July, Warrawee Needy claimed a shared world record for the fastest race mile in the history of the sport, clocking a winning mile in 1:46.4 at Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey. The five-year-old horse was originally purchased as a $20,000 yearling.
“He’s a great horse,” Carl said of Warrawee Needy, bred by Warrawee Farms of Rockwood. “We got the world record, one of only three horses to do it,” Carl said, adding that the feat also gives Warrawee Needy the distinction of being the first horse to achieve that time during night races.
Even more remarkable, Jody was at the helm, driving the horse to victory.
It wasn’t the first – nor will it be the last – time this dynamic father/son team crosses over to the winner’s circle. In 2011, the pair was responsible for bringing home the Pepsi North America Cup with Up The Credit, a $1.5 million win.
“I didn’t think I’d ever win a big race for him,” Jody said of his father, despite that the
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“Carl would have a two-stall trailer, and then buy four horses and have to build on,” Debbie said, laughing. And they’d stop so he could construct an addition to the trailer.
But the big move for the Jamieson family came in 1986.
“Truro wasn’t a great place to bet and Sackville’s track closed down,” Carl explained. “Everything was booming in Ontario for racing.”
Returning to Nova Scotia from a horse sale in Ontario on Christmas Eve, Carl announced to the family they were moving to Ontario – in two days.
Despite her reluctance to leave Nova Scotia and their extended family behind, Debbie packed up the family.
She recalls how on Dec 26, they loaded the truck, a horse trailer with five horses, and brought along a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and leftover Christmas turkey to keep everyone fed as they drove through the night, straight to their new home.
“We had everything we owned in the back of that truck,” she said.
Carl sold the family farm in Nova Scotia for $20,000 and turned around instantly and spent $13,000 on a horse.
“And that’s what started it,” Debbie said. That first horse got them on the right track, so to speak. It was a gamble, but the odds were in their favour.
“I was top driver in the Maritimes. I had to start all over again from scratch,” Carl said. “When you run in a different province and you’re trying to get people to know you, it takes time.”
It was a risk that paid off.
“It’s definitely been worth it,” Debbie said, adding she ended her teaching career to help focus on raising the children and supporting Carl’s career, which she said can be hard on a family. There were lean times in the beginning, she admits, adding, “It’s what we did to survive, but it got better.”
Carl doesn’t spend a lot of time looking back. His decision not only changed the quality of life for his family, it started his son in a career that has continued the family legacy.
Jody gives full credit to Carl for showing early confidence in his ability.
“When I got into the business I was six feet tall, not your stereotypical driver size,” Jody said. He broke into the field of racing with quality OSS horses trained by his father. These were horses “that people spent their hard-earned money on, owned by someone else.”
It was another risk by Carl that paid off in the undisputed success of his son – but it came with flack from within the industry.
“My dad’s attitude was, ‘if you don’t like it, then you don’t work with me,’” Jody said. “Single-handedly, if it hadn’t been for my dad letting me drive his horses, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Morrison agrees.
“Jody learned what he knows … the basis is what he learned from Carl. Jody will always teach a horse. He recognizes that there is another day to come, so if a horse isn’t winning a race that day, he’ll ease up on it,” Morrison said.
He added not all drivers conduct themselves that way, often to the detriment of the horses and those who invest in them.
Carl acknowledges his daughter Brandy is also an important part of the family business, with a keen sense of horsemanship, but she has decided not to follow in her father’s big footprints.
Jody notes Carl’s lessons stretch beyond the race track.
“To be a man of principle and to value family, to value me and my sister and my mom in our lives … what more could you ask for as a father? It’s just amazing to see the road he laid for us,” said Jody.
Family is what keeps Carl grounded and makes the work worthwhile.
“It’s pretty special with the whole career and my kids grew up around horses. Jody is one of the top drivers in Canada,” Carl said.
“I showed him the ropes, learning the trade, but he had to fix some stuff up on his own. It’s a different league now than there was when I drove. There is more catch driving.”
Of the industry, Carl says, “You have to have broad shoulders. It’s really quite a letdown when you don’t win and you really thought you would, but you just have to bite the bullet and get on with it the next day. It’s a very competitive business. Everybody hopes for the best for everybody.”
Landing in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame is the ultimate reward for an impressive career that is not yet over. Morrison, for one, is proud of his colleague’s accomplishment.
“He’s a humble guy, but he was deeply honoured to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was very deserving of it in our opinion,” said Morrison.
Jody said he was proud, yet “shocked,” when he heard of his father’s induction.
“I was more surprised that he’s still so young … I don’t consider him to be of that age (to be inducted). I know him as the guy who started out a stable with horses from Nova Scotia in late ‘86, in Flamboro racing horses at night … that’s the guy I know, who works every day.”
Debbie agrees.
“It’s certainly been something we didn’t expect. We didn’t set out for it. We started out to make a living,” she said, adding she is happy to see her husband’s hard work recognized.
“It’s a very special thing,” Carl said of his induction. “It’s something not everybody gets. You put your name in the Hall of Fame. It’s there for life. My grandkids and great grandkids will see it.”
After helping to create a legacy of horsemanship for the Jamieson family, already three generations deep, Carl is happy his own parents lived to see his induction.
“For us, coming from the small fishing village of Wallace, NS, having a world champion driver in the family, me in the Canadian Hall of Fame, there aren’t too many people who are alive to see this happen in their career,” said Carl.
But Carl won’t be retiring anytime soon.
With training in Florida all winter and a full schedule at his Rockwood farm next summer, in addition to his duties at Murray Cox Training Centre in Erin, there is much work to do.
And Carl wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You love it. You love the sport, you love the horses and to be successful you have to work at it.”The Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame is located at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto. For more information visit www.canadianhorseracinghalloffame.com.
