No one will ever know how many races Keith Waples won in his career.
Certainly he doesn’t know. The records say 3,206, but the records are assuredly wrong because they don’t include countless victories at small tracks where he honed his skills.
“That was before they started keeping records,” Waples, now 84, says.
These days the grand master of Canadian harness racing spends his winters in Florida, “getting fat” he jokes. He lives not far from Pompano Park, but says he takes far greater interest in watching the races from Canada on TV.
He knows his place in harness racing history is secure, but his modest demeanor belies his immodest accomplishments. To many horsemen, Keith Waples was the ne plus ultra of his generation.
One of the true believers is Hall of Famer Mike Lachance, who speaks with reverence when talking about Waples.
“I started watching Keith when I was about 13 years old at Richelieu Park in Montreal,” he says. “He always impressed me with the way he sat in the bike. He had so much patience in a race. No one had more patience than Keith did. And he was an all-around horseman. He could train and develop young horses.”
For young Mike Lachance, watching Waples on the track was a living textbook in the art of driving.
Lachance marvels at the fact that Waples was still driving with the best when he was in his 50s, which often wasn’t the case with his contemporaries.
“He was such a smart driver,” says Lachance. “He was such a nice guy, too. He worked hard and was never sour. He was always joking around.”
A few years ago Lachance watched Waples, already in his early 80s, drive in a Hall of Fame race and said, “He looked just the same as he always did in the bike.”
Last fall Lachance sat with Waples at the Harrisburg sale and said, “We had a nice talk and he really looks great.” (When told of Lachance’s remarks, Waples laughed and quipped, “I guess I’ll have to slip Mike ten the next time I see him.”)
Another person who stood in awe of Waples driving ability was Murray Brown, long time public relations director of Hanover Shoe Farms. A member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, Brown grew up in Montreal when Waples was the master of the measured win.
“I cannot recall ever seeing him win a race by more than a length,” says Brown. “In most instances it was a neck or less. I cannot recall him ever losing a photo finish. I’m sure he did, but I can’t recall ever seeing it happen.”
Brown and his cohorts knew Waples as “The Thin Man,” a nickname bestowed upon him by Baz O’Meara of the Montreal Star.
Waples was not one to whip and slash his horse even in the most furious stretch drive.
“I cannot recall a single instance when I saw him using the whip where I felt that he was actually hitting a horse,” says Brown.
Brown points out that Waples was a role model for many drivers prominent in later years.
“Not only was Keith Waples a great driver and an extraordinary horseman,” Brown says, “but he was also in my opinion the greatest teaching influence that a significant number of our great drivers ever had. You name them! Whether it was Herve [Filion], [Mike] Lachance, [Bill] O’Donnell, [John] Campbell, [Bill] Wellwood and even those older Canadian legends such as Buddy Gilmour and John Chapman----they all learned from The Thin Man. I’m sure that each and every one of them would be quick to give him credit.”
Doug McIntosh, a widely-respected trainer himself, says that Waples and Herve Filion are the only two drivers he’s ever known who could drive not only their own horses but still have a sense of what every other horse in the race was doing.
“He had an unbelievable sense of what was going on around him in a race,” says McIntosh. “He could also get up behind a horse and evaluate it so quickly. He never overdrove a horse.”
It’s a good thing that others speak so glowingly about Waples because he’s certainly not comfortable talking about his own accomplishments, either in the sulky or in building tracks in Ontario or British Columbia. He’s polite and answers all the questions, but, like many true horsemen, when talking about himself he’s about as enthusiastic as a prisoner of war. He’s only slightly more effusive when talking about his greatest horses.
Of course, it’s impossible to capture a career filled with greatness in any number of words. His experiences date back to the 1930s when he learned the ropes of the horse game and starting driving winners. Once Keith Waples began winning, he never stopped.
His honour roll of horses could stretch from Newfoundland to British Columbia, but let’s start by going back a half-century to a milestone in Canadian racing history. That was the night in 1959 when Mighty Dudley paced the first 2:00 mile on Canadian soil at Richilieu Park. And who was in the bike but Keith Waples.
“He’d win in 2:00.1 the week before,” says Waples, “and he was quite sharp at that time. Mighty Dudley was a good horse, but he couldn’t beat the top horses out at that time, like Bye Bye Byrd or some of those.”
In 1962, Waples steered the stock owned by the Miron Brothers of Quebec and scored a victory in one of the sport’s greatest classics when he drove Tie Silk to victory in the Roosevelt International. That victory came before a crowd of 53,279 that bet almost $2.8 million (more than $19.1 million in today’s dollars) on track.
That night Tie Silk beat Su Mac Lad of the United States with horses from Germany, Italy, New Zealand, France, and Belgium following them across the finish line.
“Everything favoured Tie Silk that night,” says Waples. “The mile-and-a-quarter distance helped him because I never really thought he had high speed. But he was a good, game horse.”
Ten years after winning the International Trot, Waples steered Strike Out to victory in what was the fastest Little Brown Jug in history. He picked up the catch drive behind the chestnut son of Bret Hanover when trainer John Hayes, Sr. knew he needed the best possible driver for the major stakes.
“Strike Out was a perfect horse,” says Waples. “He’d dead-heated in the Adios final with Jay Time and Gene Riegle. When we got to Delaware for the Jug, Strike Out drew inside of Jay Time and we both went out of the gate as fast as we could. I had no intention of letting Jay Time get around me.”
Strike Out was up to the task and Jay Time, who was not in top form, faltered. Strike Out’s first-heat win of 1:56.3 was the fastest mile ever on a half-mile track. He won the next heat easily, giving Waples a chance to drink from the Jug.
While Strike Out gave him that thrill, Waples says that the millionaire pacer Silver Almahurst p,1:49.4 was the best pacer he ever drove. Waples had the additional joy of owning a piece of the early 1990s free-for-aller.
In 1969-70, he raced the top Tar Heel stakes filly Bardot Hanover, then had the pleasure of racing her talented sons Alberts Star p,3,1:56.4h ($324,198) and General Star p,3,1:54.3 ($212,692). Both horses later did stud duty.
“Alberts Star was a good, sound horse, but General Star was always hurting somewhere,” he says. “General Star was the better of the two if he’d stayed sound.”
Waples winces a bit when he recalled that he “ran into somebody” with General Star in the Jug, then quickly adds, “He [General Star] beat those top horses six straight heats after the Jug.”
In his understated way, Waples likes to remember favourites like the pacing mare Woodlawn Drummond, who competed against Bret Hanover. And he gives the pacer Blaze Pick the ultimate horseman’s compliment. “It didn’t matter if you were in front or behind, he always went a good race.”
Strike Out’s record mile in the Jug is laughable by today’s standards. If he were in the Jug, he’d probably be beaten by 25 lengths. Waples says that the speed explosion in recent decades has been fueled by better breeding and faster racing surfaces. Sulkies have improved, too, he says.
“Sulkies today are built to help a horse, particularly one that’s hurting upfront,” says Waples.
Waples says that he sees many good young drivers in Ontario these days, but many of them “don’t get away from home that much” and thus don’t get the spotlight.
“What I think is a nice driver doesn’t seem to do that well any more,” he emphasizes, saying he likes to see a driver who is considerate of the horse he’s driving. “Today the drivers stay with a horse as long as he’s sharp and then they skip over to another one after a month or two.”
Waples jokes that he’s “over the hill” now and yet when he was at the pinnacle of his profession, he stood atop a mountain of accomplishments, not just a hill. Other drivers have won more races and earned more money, but no one in Canadian harness racing is held in higher esteem than Keith Waples.