Things are eerie at the Fort
Champs' grave? Not all the time, Mike Ulmer finds
By MIKE ULMER -- Toronto Sun
There is a long scar of raised ground that snakes inside the Fort and ends just a few feet from the ancient grandstand.
It's the last vestiges of the Grand Trunk, the railway line that once carried horses from Toronto to the Fort Erie racetrack.
It looks like a long, slender grave. That fits. With its long homestretch and soft surface, the Fort, the site of the Prince of Wales Stakes on Sunday, is known as a the final resting place for Triple Crown hopes.
"The comparison has always been between Fort Erie and Saratoga," said Tom Gostlin, Fort Erie's race secretary. "Both places are known as the graveyard for favourites."
Part of that comparison is drawn from the elegant look of both tracks. Horses have run at Fort Erie since 1897 and her beautiful gables draw the eye all the way from the Queen Elizabeth Way.
Dark patches of blue paint peek out from the aqua of her wooden seats. Scratch through the blue a bit and you find red. There is no counting the layers of history in what once was the summertime track in Ontario, a place that often housed better than 12,000 spectators in vast, sun-bleached stands. Northern Dancer broke his maiden here in 1963. In 1961, a horse named Puss - Boots broke from the lead and careened into one of the infield's three-man made lakes.
The lakes have been nicknamed Win, Place and Show. The names were bestowed so long ago, no one knows which name fits which lake.
The racing scenes in the movie Black Beauty were filmed here. Producers, looking for a location to shoot the movie Seabiscuit, scouted the track as well.
But simulcasting, an innovation pioneered between Woodbine and Fort Erie, was the body blow the Fort could not shake off. About 80% of the money bet on Fort Erie racing now comes from outside her walls and crowds often are sparse.
The arrival of slots during the late 1990s proved both the Fort's salvation and undoing. Slots money, redirected into the racetrack, has allowed race officials to double and sometimes triple the size of purses, but the slots have commandeered vast stretches of the old grandstand.
Still, the view of the track as a king-breaking racing venue remains.
Woodcarver, a 3-5 favourite in 1999, was beaten by Gandria in the 1999 Prince of Wales. Royal Embrace, also a 3-5 favourite, finished third, 10 lengths behind a horse named Overskate in 1978.
In 1992 Alydeed, an 11 1/2-length winner of the Plate and a second-place finisher in the Preakness, arrived to find the track muddied by three days of rain. A horse named Benburb beat him by a nose and paid $51 for each $2 bet.
With her longer than usual homestretch and kind footing, The Fort favours the strong finisher, not the speed horse.
Wet weather makes the surface even less predictable.
"If the track is harrowed and sealed it stays fast," said Francine Villeneuve, the Fort's leading jockey. "In that situation, I think it's deeper and a little slower than Woodbine."
Many of the horses that arrive to race at the Fort have never raced on any other surface but Woodbine's and while the distance from Toronto to the Fort can be traversed in under two hours, some horses leave their gumption at home.
Mindful of the need to keep Wando comfortable, his handlers last year put a pony buddy in the stall beside him and jury-rigged a mesh window in between. It worked. Wando galloped to an easy win and later claimed a $500,000 bonus as the first Canadian Triple Crown winner in a decade.
Current Plate champ Niigon has been installed as the even-money favourite with A Bit O'Gold at 7-5 and Just in Case Jimmy next at 8-1.
Niigon's owners, Robert and Mark Krembil, and trainer Eric Coatrieux can take comfort in two facts.
First, Niigon is stabled at the Chiefswood Stables north of Toronto so the trailer ride to the Fort should have no ill effect. Niigon has raced, albeit unspectacularly, in the United States.
Second, The Fort's status as home of the giant killers doesn't stand up to statistical scrutiny. Thirteen of the past 34 reigning Plate champs, or 38.2%, have won the Prince of Wales. That figure mirrors the 39% victory rate of Kentucky Derby winners at the Preakness over roughly the same period.
"Yes, horses don't usually win their first time here," said Layne Giliforte, a veteran trainer who operates out of the Fort and Woodbine. "But good horses can overcome it."
