The weather was fine for the racing fans who filled the grandstands at the Ormstown fairgrounds on Saturday, September 10. With races featuring trotters, pacers, and harness racing ponies, there was plenty to keep spectators on the edges of their seats.
Racing excitement was coupled with celebrations of members of the racing community. Down in the paddock in front of the stands, driver Richard Simard was lauded for having reached 6000 career wins earlier this summer. Back on the track, the sixth race in the program was a commemorative trot honouring the late Ormstown harness racing great, Maurice Paquette.
Paquette was well-known in racing circles and in the Valley community as a man who devoted his life to harness racing in general, and in particular to the Ormstown racetrack. He worked with Pierre-Paul Naud of the Circuit Régionale des courses de chevaux du Québec to bring racing back to Ormstown in 2012 after a decade’s hiatus.
The commemorative trot was won by Style of Elegance, owned and driven by Jean-Paul Rousseof L’Épiphanie, Quebec.
