Leanne Elnicki said she had been attending Woodbine Racetrack since she was a kid. Now, she works at the huge facility in North Etobicoke as its senior communications manager.
“My dad's been bringing me here since I was a little girl,” she said.
Elnicki has been working at Woodbine for the past two years and said what makes her more excited about her job is the opportunity to work in a field she has followed for decades and get to know the people who work there, who are as passionate about what they do.
The 650-acre facility at the corner of Rexdale Boulevard and Highway 27 is central to the province’s horse racing industry, part of the Woodbine Entertainment Group. Behind the glitter and excitement of the races, there’s a community most fans don’t see: the love the groomers, stable hands, jockeys, barn managers and walkers have for the majestic beasts at the centre of the sport.
Care for the horses includes everything from brushing to putting new shoes on to being a midwife.
Trainer John LeBlanc, who owns a barn at the track, remembers the day he helped his horse Emily deliver her pony Panda, also known as Immaculate Inning. He said Emily started her labour just as he was leaving work, and by the time he got home, he and his wife had brought Panda into the world.
“I (went) home because she (Emily) was out in the paddock in the snow, and his feet were sticking out the back end,” he said. LeBlanc and his wife managed to get Emily into the barn.
“She wouldn't lie down. It was her first baby. She had no idea what was happening, right? And then I got there, she lay down,” he said. “So I pulled him out.
"He's 12 now, and he last raced with me when he was seven, so he hasn't been here for five years,” LeBlanc said of Panda, who is now back at Woodbine. He said the horse seemed confused as to why he was there.
“He thinks he's supposed to still be training to be a racehorse,” he said.
Elnicki said LeBlanc owns her favourite horse named Hello Friends and “she's about to turn nine years old, so last year was her last season.
“He and his wife own the horse, so she'll be taken care of very well on their farm,” she said.
Some retired horses become “ponies,” which includes Panda, who helps train younger horses and guides them through their journey at the racetrack.
Elnicki said there is a place called LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Society, where they take retired racehorses and find them a new career, “so some of them will go on to do show jumping, or Dressage, or just be a beloved pet for somebody at their, you know, farms, a companion to ride with.
“Like, people have these horrible scenarios in their head, most of these horses get adopted out, and they find new lives basically,” Elnicki said.
She said most horses start racing around the age of two, and “when the babies start racing, you can usually tell because they're very chaotic.
“When it actually comes to a race, sometimes with two-year-olds, the gate will open and they'll stand like they don't know what's going on, or they'll run out and they'll run sideways,” Elnicki said. “Two-year-olds are so unpredictable.”
Santino Di Paola, a trainer at Woodbine Racetrack who’s been working there for eight years, said his babies are at a training facility as they tend to be all over the place.
He said they won’t be at the track until May when they’ve learned some skills in running.
“There's some people who have babies in right now, and it's crazy out there. It's kind of, they're all over the place, so I'd rather mine be proper and know what they're doing when they come in,” he said.
Di Paola also won his first stakes race last year.
“Last season was kind of a career-high. The year before that, we hit our most number of wins, so I'm quite confident in my abilities in season eight,” Di Paola said.
He grew up in the industry and was raised on a farm, and his parents have owned racehorses for as long as he can remember.
As he got older, he wanted to be a trainer, “so normally, you start out as a hot walker here, which is cooling out the horses after training. Then you make your way to a groom, which is you kind of taking care of them more, and then an assistant trainer, and trainer,” Di Paola said.
“When I started, I just got thrown in as a trainer role, so it's been a learning curve,” he said.
He takes care of about 20 horses in his barn, and his favourite thing about his job is watching the horses develop and get stronger and fitter during this time of the year.
“And you can kind of see who's going to rise above and have a good season. You can tell normally within the first month of training, so this is my favourite time,” said Di Paola, obviously proud of his horses. “Little Teddy's been second five times in stakes since she broke through last year. She'll be exciting this year.
“I have a horse named Gerald who's kind of on the King's Plate trail,” he said.
The King’s Plate is North America’s oldest continuously run race and Canada’s most prestigious. The 166th running of three-year-olds this August has a $1-million stake.
“We definitely have an Oaks filly…so there's a couple that are kind of on the trail to be running in the bigger races this year, which I'm excited about,” he said. An Oaks race is a stakes race for three-year-old fillies.
Di Paola said the horses’ day normally starts at 4:30 a.m., when they’re fed breakfast and the grooms begin their care of them, clean the stalls, and then the horses usually begin their training at 6 a.m. and end at 10:30 a.m.
“Right now, we start training at 7 a.m. just because of the time change and lighting, cause the main track's not open with the lights,” he said.
The horses return to the barn after training, where the hot walker cools them out for about 30 minutes, and if they have a breeze, which is a timed workout where the horses are sprinting, they will cool out for about one hour, Di Paola said.
“So, they're making sure they're drinking, cooling down, they get a bath, […] and then you feed them lunch, and if it's a race day, you kind of get everything ready to go over to the front side and race in whatever race number you're in,” he said.
Wendy McLaren, a grounds property service manager who has been at Woodbine for about 37 years, ensures the barns are well-maintained and that everything is in good condition.
“We fix doors. We fix screens. We fix back walls that horses kick out, and then, of course, we're snow removal too, so it just goes non-stop,” McLaren said. “Considering the amount of snow we had this winter, we were on track for everybody coming back.”
McLaren said her dad worked in the backstretch and her mom worked on the front side years ago.
“So, it's really nice to be here because all these people knew my family, and some of my parents' friends, I've met their kids through here, and we're still friends,” she said.
“Like, it's fun. We have dinners together. We go out together. It's huge, like, this is a huge part of my life,” McLaren said.
She said most people at Woodbine Racetrack have been working there for as long as she has, and some of the people in the dorms depend on them, so it is a safe place for them.
