The tragic fate of R Rkadabra

Trois-Rivieres, QC – It was Saturday morning (May 14), after his usual warm-up with harness racing trainer Marc Lemay, his owner, in the sulky. He had been quiet as usual and there were no signs of heart trouble, as often happens in these cases, that his heart would suddenly stop beating.

A few steps from the exit ramp, but on the track. Such was the tragic fate of the 14-year-old trotter R Rkadabra, one of the most famous horses of H3R enthusiasts, as he has performed there so often over the past eight years.

R Rkadabra was just getting ready to start his final season at the races. He was sired by Kadabra from the Angus Hall mare, True To Form.

When he talks about his trotter, Marc Lemay, an owner of many horses’ year after year, you immediately feel that ‘Kad’ was special:

“I asked for him in Toronto on March 7, 2014 for $12,000,” Lemay explained. “Since then, he has won for me about thirty races, on all kinds of tracks, even on the tracks of the Quebec Regional Circuit; so, I was the one driving him. He was the horse of a lifetime, one might say, throughout those years. A love of horse, without any malice, endearing, special, gentle with everyone. He was the favorite of his official groom, Mélanie Gaudreault.

“What made him so special too,” said Lemay. “Was that he always gave everything he had. He struggled to win races, at every start. You could always be sure that he would get high. A heart at work as it happens little in a life of owner and coach.

“It’s true that on the track he was a different horse,” Lemay added. “As soon as he put a hoof on the track, he was 100% business, to say the least. In the language of racing, it is said of this kind of horse that he ‘pulls’ and believe me, he ‘pulled’, to scare me sometimes. But as soon as he left this same track, he became again that sweet and endearing animal that he has always been.

“It’s okay, up to a point,” Lemay reminisced. “that he died on the track, because it was his favorite place. One year, I had to stop him for a few months. He had languished so far from the track and the racing action that he had lost a few hundred pounds. It describes part of what he was, a born competitor.

“Without the daily care that Mélanie gave him, the horse would never have been able to race for so long and have such a career on the track,” Lemay said. “Mélanie spared nothing for ‘her’ trotter, her year of company, so to speak. She often gave him massages that did him great good, little touches that make all the difference when it comes to an animal that was no longer very healthy.

“He was afflicted with problems on all fours,” Lemay explained. “that’s telling you his courage when he came to the track. Dr. Forget, his veterinarian, often told me that it was a kind of small miracle that he was always on track with all his injuries, his booboos, big and small.”

Melanie Gaudreault shared her grief and her memories:

“My old man, my best friend for years. Your heart decided that your career would end today on the track, where you liked to be the most.

Everyone knows how much I loved you my old man, I find it so hard to think that I will never see you again. I thank you for all the victories, all our sweet moments, you will have marked my life my man and I know in the depths of my heart that you will watch over me in your own way now, we see each other in my dreams

I will miss you so much, I love you.”

For those who have never had the chance to rub shoulders with horses up close, perhaps these words will seem exaggerated. But for anyone who has had the happiness of having a horse in their life, an exceptional horse, this one or that one, will understand.

R Rkadabra’s lifetime record: 214 starts (38-27-22) $168,107 5,1.56.3 at Woodbine.

by Daniel Delisle, for the Quebec Jockey Club