  Barb Side, 78, poses with her horse No Hesitation at Northlands on Friday. TNo Hesitation won the Canadian Derby on Saturday. (AMBER BRACKEN/QMI Agency)
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Al Side was admiring his 78-year-old bride, dressed like she’d been to the Easter Parade when she was a little girl.
“She could be the leading owner this year. With one horse.”
Barb Side is the owner of No Hesitation, the winner of Saturday’s $300,000 Canadian Derby at Northlands Park — the richest horse race in Canada west of Woodbine, Ont.
It was the fifth win of the season for the grey — an allowance and four stakes races.
Barb, a mother of six and grandmother of 18 from Grande Prairie, bought No Hesitation for $30,000 after coercing and cajoling his former owner when the horse failed to cover the reserve at an auction in California a year ago January.
“She’s won $280,000 with one race horse,” Al said.
Is this going to be big in Grande Prairie?
“I’d like to think it is,” said Barb.
“I’d like to think he’s going to be chosen Grande Prairie’s male athlete of the year,” added Al.
Was winning the Derby as sweet a feeling as No Hesitation’s owner thought it would be?
“Oh, yeah. It was wonderful,” said the five-foot-one wisp of a woman who didn’t take exception to this columnist referring to her as a little old lady in Saturday’s column — “because I am.”
“She said that with No Hesitation,” chimed in her daughter, Linda.
Barb is a delightful little old lady.
If you pictured her watching the race in the clubhouse, surround by high rollers, you don’t know the lady.
She sat with her unbelievably successful young trainer, Jim Meyaard, feeding off each other’s energy, the two of them high in the stands where the general public sits.
“We’ve had a bit of luck sitting up there,” she said, admitting that superstition and repetition were factors.
“Did I jump up and down? Of course. I do that a lot. It’s the biggest race for me to win.”
Daughter Linda laughed.
“There are not many 78-year-olds who get that much pleasure out of something,” she said.
“My dad and my mom are almost 80 years old, and they’re sure not laying around doing nothing. Nobody deserves this more than grandma,” she said of her mom.
“He didn’t let us down,” Barb said of her horse, which has now won five straight races at Northlands Park and beat seven imports in the field of 10 which paid the winner $180,000.
Two of the favourites, Alberta-bred Professor Pollard and Minnesota traveller Stachys, were involved in a three-horse spill on the first turn the second time around in the mile and three-eighths endurance test.
“I didn’t see the accident; my horse was in the first three and I never took my eyes off him. I’m sure it didn’t change the outcome,” said Barb.
Al, who owns several other horses with his wife and even more with trainer Meyaard as a partner, said this one was all Barb’s
“She deserves it. She picked the horse. She did the negotiating to get him. She named him.”
But Al said that while he’s in the background on this one because that’s where he should be, winning the Canadian Derby means a lot to him, too.
“I was raised eight blocks from here,” he said of Northlands Park.
“I came here years and years ago as a kid. I’ve always felt lucky that I grew up in this end of town with the race track, Clarke Stadium to watch the Eskimos and the Edmonton Gardens, to watch the hockey teams.”
As individuals, a pair or in partnership with their trainer, the Sides figured they had the year of all years in 2009.
“From the start of the year in Hollywood Park to Santa Anita to Bonner Park in Nebraska to Northlands in Edmonton, we won 50 races,” said Al. “We’re not at 50 yet this year. But the revenue is up substantially. We’ve won a lot of stakes races.”
They won both the Canadian Derby and the City of Edmonton Distaff Saturday to make it eight.
No Hesitation isn’t the only star in their stable. Older horse Salt Flat Speed, claimed for just $7,500 last year, has won five straight and is so popular with fans here that an end-of-season track promotion will be a giveaway of Salt Flat Speed bobbleheads.
Al says they’re not done yet.
He figures they’re going to be back next year with a chance to win back-to-back Derby championships.
“We have a horse in the barn,” said Al of a two-year- old. “Bad Butch.”
That one’s his.
terry.jones@sunmedia.ca
