Let’s start with a joke:
A man is interested in buying a horse from a farmer. The price is just $100.
The man asks why he is selling the horse so cheap. The farmer replies “Well, he doesn’t look so good.”
The man says “I don’t care what he looks like. You’ve got yourself a deal.”a
The next day the man returns to the farmer with the horse. The man, irate, says “This horse you sold me is blind” to which the farmer replies “Well, I told you he doesn’t look so good.”
Trainer Carson Frey has only half the problem as that horse buyer. And it’s definitely not really a problem at all.
Blind in his right eye since he was born, three-year-old Javier remained undefeated Saturday at Century Mile comfortably winning the $50,000 six furlong Western Canada stakes race.
Three starts. Three wins.
“The blindness hasn’t been as issue at all,” said trainer Carson Frey.
“He can be a bit quirky. If he hears something from his right side and can’t see it he will jump to his left. Right to where his handler is standing.
“But other than that he just acts like just about any horse. It certainly hasn’t affected his running.”
That’s for sure.
Bumped a few strides away from the starting gate, Javier - under jockey Brian Boodramsingh - got away second last but muscled his way up to third getting an almost perfect stalking position behind pace setter Relaxgodoitramone, favourite Debrusk, who had to overcome a taxing five-wide journey, and faltering Cairo Cowboy.
Down the stretch, Debrusk, who had won his last four races, drifted leaving a gaping hole for Javier, who made no mistakes and went on to a length and a half victory over Helioo, who hopped at the start and got away last but made a huge move in the stretch to get second.
Like Javier, Helioo - trained by Mel Snow - is owned by popular Don Danard to complete a $63.20 Danard exactor.
“I didn’t know which horse I was cheering for more; Javier or Helioo,” said Danard.
“To win was great. To run one-two in a stakes race is really great.
“But to me the biggest thing was that they both beat a really good field,” said Danard, who has 20 horses in training with four different trainers.
“I’m not sure how good Javier is,” said Frey, who started training in 1999 but then took seven years off to help his wife raise his two kids.
“Javier has done everything right. He handles everything.
“He galloped out so strong that the pony rider had to bring him to a stop.
“He’s been in trouble in all three of his races. Bumped in this one; pinched at the break in his 2026 debut on May 9 and then he didn’t break well at all in his career debut last September.
‘He gets in trouble but finds a way to fight through.”
Frey said Javier is named Red around the barn. As in the Edmonton-born jockey Red Pollard, who guided the sensational and legendary Seabiscuit. Pollard was also blind in one eye.
“I hope this is our little Seabiscuit,” said Frey.
Bought for $16,000 as a two-year-old at the 2025 Fasig Tipton July digital sale, Javier was purchased on line.
“I picked him outright,” said Frey. “I had video of galloping and walking and his conformation was really good outside of his eye.
“And I loved his breeding,” he said of Javier’s sire Practical Joke, who who has two Grade 1 wins - the Champagne as a two-year-old in 2016 and then thee Allen Jerkens the following year.
Javier’s dam is lightly raced Allegory by Unbridled Song, the 1995 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner.
“He’s really well bred. I’m convinced we got him for just $16,000 because of his blindness. Practical Joke now stands for $100,000.”
Frey said Javier isn’t a big horse but “His stride is astronomical.”
Most importantly Frey and Boordramingh both believe Javier wants to run farther.
“I’m excited so see him go far,” said Boordramingh. “He does everything you ask. He doesn’t want to sprint.”
As for more distance, Frey agreed.
“The farther he goes the more he trains the more aggressive he gets.”
The August 22 Canadian Derby is a mile and a quarter.
“That’s what everybody with a three-year-old is thinking about,” said Frey, who admitted to being nervous before the Western Canada.
“I get nervous whether I’m running a $5,000 claimer, or, like this one, a $50,000 purse.
Unlike Frey, Boordramingh wasn’t nervous in the least.
“Brian even said to me in the paddock to relax. He said ‘I got this. Him and me I got this.’”
That’s for sure.
Blind-in-one-eye horses are rare but there have been a few cases.
One-eyed Ready Racer won 20 times in Alberta including winning the Sun Sprint two years in a row in 2013 and again the following year.
Ready Racer won $328,000 for trainer Dale Saunders.
Then there was Mateo, a one-eyed harness horse who won the Western Canada Pacing Derby in 2017 at Northlands Park.
Illinois Derby winner Pollard’s Vision was another. So was Patch, who ran third in the Belmont.
The road to the Canadian Derby is still full of barricades, paving machines and far from completion but it’s starting to take shape.
In addition to Javier, another three-year-old jumped into the conversation: Sonofaghost.
Winning Saturday’s fifth race - a seven-furlong allowance - Sonofaghost duelled with River Rock Fire and Twickenham for a long time but put those two away and still had more than enough to hold off Letsgotothenino.
It was Sonofaghost’s second win in two starts. In his maiden voyage, Sonofaghost won most impressively by four and a quarter lengths.
Owned by Curtis Landry, who bought Sonofaghost for $16,136 (U.S.) at the Ontario September Yearling Sale, the connections also believe he wants to go longer.
“He’s a mile and a quarter horse all day long,” said Landry. “He wants two more furlongs.”
Landry, as he so often does, picked out Sonofaghost by himself.
“All Curtis,” said leading trainer Gonzalo Anderson. “He’s got a good eye. I wasn’t even at the sale.”
Landry was asked if the Derby was in his plans.
“What do you think,” asked and answered Landry.
STOCK REPORT - There was one other stake on Saturday, the $50,000 Chariot Chaser, which was won by Playful giving four-time Alberta leading jockey Dane Nelson his 500th victory in Canada. Nelson, from Jamaica, has won another 1,200 races in the Caribbean.
Nelson was Trinidad and Tobago’s leading rider a startling nine times.
“I wanted to get win 500 here in Edmonton,” said Nelson. “It’s only respectful for me to do it here.”
Second last down the backstretch, Playful collared What a Force in the final sixteenth of a mile to win going away. The race set up perfectly for Playful, another Anderson trainee, with half a mile going in a blistering :44 2/5.
Playful is now two-for-two this year after winning two of her six starts last year including the Freedom of the City by more than six lengths.
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Inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2017.
Author: The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty.