New season, new challenges for Pascal Berube

This Sunday (May 5) is opening day for the 2024 harness racing season at the Hippodrome 3R (H3R) in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. And no one is more excited for the start of the season than four-time defending driving champion Pascal Berube.

Berube led all drivers last season at H3R with 81 wins, 24 wins ahead of rival Stephane Brosseau. The prior year Berube rewrote the record books at H3R with 102 wins, the first driver ever to win more than 100 races in a single season at H3R.

And already in 2024, Berube is the second leading driver at Rideau Carleton Raceway with 14 wins. Between the two tracks he keeps himself pretty busy as a sought-after catch-driver.

“Being on the road to a new season is always exciting,” Berube explained. “I hope to have a great season once again. “I’m not putting pressure on myself because having already been the leading driver four times. It surprises me when I look back on it and I’m very proud and happy about it.

“I am currently having a great start to the season at Rideau Carleton,” Berube said. “The trainers give me good horses and make the work easier. I like this place too, it’s always nice to drive on a bigger track (5/8ths). Trois-Rivieres is a nice half mile but a 5/8 is fun too.”

So far, the winter season has not taken its toll on the race surface at H3R. The track has been able to hold three qualifying sessions and the entry box on Wednesday should be jammed with horses ready to race opening day Sunday.

“For the moment the track is not yet at its full level,” Berube explained. “But there has been action on it since last November, so I think it is only a matter or a week or so before it will be very beautiful to race over.”

This year the Hippodrome 3R has a full menu of racing events and stakes races, the richest season since 2019 before the pandemic.

In date order major events include Sunday, June 2 when H3R hosts the Quebec / Eastern Ontario Regional Driving Championship to help decide who will represent Canada in the World Driving Championship in New Zealand next year.

But, for the first time in the event’s 17-year history, the 2024 National Driving Championship Final will be held at H3R on Friday, July 6.

Then on Sunday, August 18, H3R hosts the return of the $200,000 Prix d’Ete for four-year-old pacers. The race had been absent at the track since 2019 but returns this year with a host of top-class horses already nominated including It’s My Show, Stockade Seelster, Voukefalas, El Rey, Moment Is Here and Ervin Hanover.

The richest day of horse racing in all of Quebec will be the tracks Super Sunday on September 8 when all eight of the Quebec Sire Stakes finals for two and three-year-olds will be held. It is the richest day of racing in the province with more than $500,000 in purses. The Quebec series takes place throughout the summer months with three legs in each division before the finals.

The stakes season concludes with a big bang on Sunday, October 6 featuring the return of the $120,000 Brian Paquet Memorial Invitational Pacing events for older horses and mares plus the Lucien Bombardier Pace for two-year-old fillies.

“The National Driving Championship will be very exciting again,” Berube said. “I’m still super proud of having finished third in Edmonton. To think I was two placed away from representing Canada.

“I admit that it would be the dream of a lifetime to have the chance to wear the colors of the country.” Berube added. “As for the Prix d’Ete, I can’t wait to see because it’s always impressive to see the horses that we idealize on TV during their three-year-old season and who the following year come here to us in Trois-Rivieres.

The Hippodrome 3R gets underway with a 12:00 noon post time on Sunday. Friday twilight racing begins on June 7 at 4:00 pm. For more information, visit here.

“I’m looking forward to Sunday,” Berube concluded. “I wish myself to have fun and once again enjoy the chance to do what I love.”

by Steve Wolf, for the Quebec Jockey Club