Raise a glass to My Kinda Delite

While the big guns were racking up wins at Assiniboia Downs this week with their expensive purchases, 83-year-old trainer Doug Mustard and his $3,000 Manitoba Yearling Sale purchase stole a little thunder with their own particular brand of wackiness.

Mustard teamed up with his son Carmen, his wife Judy and jockey Shavon Townsend to win the fourth race on Wednesday and $12,900 with his four-year-old filly My Kinda Delite. Not a bad haul for his two-horse stable this early in the meet.

The rumour mill was whirling in the backstretch before the race. It said his four-year-old Speculating filly could run. There was supposed to be seven horses in the race, but the horses had different ideas, and the field blew from the gate with four runners.

Two of those then ran into each other and dropped well back, which left Mustard’s horse with one to beat, but she didn’t quite catch the break and was forced to play catchup.

My Kinda Delite showed her morning promise by catching the leader quickly, but just when she appeared poised to go by on the turn she started drifting out. By the time she got to the top of the stretch, she was 2½-lengths back and drifting further towards the outside rail. But the bay beauty came charging down the lane to take over at the sixteenth pole and drew out to win by 2 ½-lengths while continuing to drift.

Then Townsend fell off.

Everything was OK though, and with a little help he remounted and returned to the happy family affair in the winner’s circle. Track photographer Jason Halstead told Mustard he was going to have a closeup for this win, because “she was just about in the winner’s circle when she went by me.”

“She ran pretty good once she got straightened out,” said Mustard. “I thought he (jockey Shavon Townsend) was going to the grandstand for a beer. I told him to stay close to the rail.”

To which Townsend later replied, “Yeah, but you didn’t say which one.”

Townsend ended up scoring a hat trick Wednesday, while Mustard was left beaming at getting the job done after three years of work. Townsend had also been working with the horse for a few years, galloping her in the mornings.

“He told me she’d win last year if I ever got her started,” said Mustard. “He was right. It just took a little longer.”

The night My Kinda Delite won, Mustard’s grandchildren were all at the Downs. There were congratulatory texts from Swan River and their hometown of Gladstone. And there was Whopper Wednesday.

“We used to drink 24 beers,” said Mustard, a former Manitoba Hydro worker who has been training horses for over 45 years, just like his late father, Wendell, who started training here in 1958. “Now we have hamburgers. We had a hell of a night.”

Mustard hasn’t had a drink in 25 years.

“Don’t miss it,” he said. “But if you average it out over the course of your lifetime, I’d still be a good one.”

At 83, he’s pulled back from the paddock a bit, and Carmen saddles the horses now.

“You’re not as quick as you used to be,” he said. “And you go stumbling over, and they walk over top of you, it hurts. And you know, guys like me break a leg or break an arm. Sometimes it does them in.”

Asked why he keeps coming back, Mustard didn’t hesitate.

“Gives you something to do,” he said. “Even a guy like me can accomplish something. You get a two-year-old or a three-year-old, and you raise them, you get them broke, and you come in here, and you win a race. You’ve accomplished something real. Something that you can see.”

Mustard still loves to get up in the mornings and talk to the horses.

“They talk back to you,” he said.

What’s the goal from here? “I’d like to make 100. I think I’ll do it. Life is good.”

“All my friends are gone,” continued Mustard. “I go up to the grandstand now, I don’t know anybody. But I’m on deck. And that’s the scary part. You know what my biggest ambition is? To stay healthy and know why I got up in the morning. If I’m not healthy and I don’t know where I’m at, I hope I fall in the creek.”

Not right now though.

My Kinda Delite was doing great the morning after her race.