Two years after injury, Bob comes through

Bob Loblaw’s (Sunshine Beach) first harness racing victory in two years last Wednesday came as a load off the shoulders of trainer and co-owner/breeder Ken Middleton.

The gelding was making his sixth start since returning to the races after his soft tissue injury in 2022. He had failed to earn a cheque in his first five attempts at Woodbine Mohawk Park. But he wired the Grand River Raceway field and showed he’s a cut above his conditioned opponents as he stormed away to a seven-and-a-half-length triumph in 1:52.3.

Middleton, the track announcer at Woodbine Mohawk Park, said the win relieved tension that had been building since Bob Loblaw’s return.

“It was a swing of emotion — what I was feeling before was pressure, just because he had underperformed leading up to that start,” he said. “I was a little nervous because I wanted him to do well, but based on what he’d done in his five earlier starts, I was thinking to myself ‘man oh man, what’s going on here? This horse should be putting up better performances and results than he has been.’

“But we found him an easier spot, and he really got into a spot where I thought, and the public thought, he should do well, and he did. He did what he was supposed to do. So [I was] able to breathe a big sigh of relief, and it was a step in the right direction for him and for us.”

BOB LOBLAW JULY 17 REPLAY

Regardless of results, Bob Loblaw has been a special horse for the announcer, as he co-bred him with Bill Galvin, who passed away in 2020. Galvin was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2014 as a communicator and was a longtime friend of Middleton. Their horse competed at the highest levels in Ontario as a two-year-old in 2021. The gelding, co-owned by Dave Walls, James Grant, and Starting Centre Stables, won the Nassagaweya Stakes, finished third in two Ontario Sires Stakes (OSS) Golds, and won an OSS Grassroots. But he also faced struggles, breaking stride in the Metro Pace, Champlain Stakes, and a Gold leg.

In his final start of the year, Bob Loblaw produced one of the most memorable calls of Middleton’s career. Heading into the 2021 OSS Super Final, the gelding was dismissed at 37-1. He started seventh, last of all on-stride horses, and was still there heading into the stretch. But he began to soar in mid-stretch and came out of the clouds, and Middleton allowed his passion to burst, calling “about time Bob!” as the horse got up to win the $225,000 event by a neck.

Middleton said it was a fairytale ending to the season.

“Once he got off the rail out of the last turn, the excitement started to build on my inside. It was like a boiling pot of water, I was just trying to keep a lid on it and call the race and call the horses that were in the contending positions,” he said. “But then all the sudden, he was there, he was storming up on the outside. It was an amazing feeling seeing him storming down and getting there in the last jump and getting to celebrate that with my friends and family. And I just felt great for the horse — it was a great way to finish the year, it was a great way to redeem himself after some struggles.”

BOB LOBLAW OSS SUPER FINAL REPLAY

That euphoric victory ended the gelding’s season, and he was laid off until the following April. Before the season, he was ranked ninth in Standardbred Canada’s North America Spring Book, giving him 20-1 odds to win the million-dollar race. His first stakes start at three came in the SBOA Stakes, in which he won his elimination and finished fifth in the final. The latter would be his last race for two years, as he injured himself in the field shortly after. It was “simply an injury that was going to take a significant amount of time for him to recover from,” time Middleton was more than willing to give. He said that the recovery process required a lot of waiting until the horse indicated he was ready to go, and even more waiting due to external factors.

The horse’s recuperation was a lengthy journey, but the trainer said caution and care were his top priorities.

“If training horses teaches you one thing, and should teach everyone, it’s that you have to be patient,” Middleton said. “If you ever ask yourself ‘should I or shouldn’t I?’ the answer is always ‘no.’

“We erred on the side of caution with him. He was such a nice horse to us, we thought we owed it to him to give him ample opportunity to heal completely, and it unfortunately just took a long, long time.”

The journey was complicated further by Middleton’s own injury. The horseman and announcer suffered cracks to multiple vertebrae in a training accident in July 2023, which required surgery. Doctors told him the outcome was lucky, and that he could’ve been paralyzed. But, like his horse, Middleton worked through the healing process despite mobility issues and nerve pain to return to racecalling in January 2024.

Middleton emphasized that his family was crucial in both his and Bob Loblaw’s returns to full strength.

“I wasn’t able to do much of anything other than get in the passenger’s seat of my truck and get driven out to the training centre to watch them jog,” he said. “I owe an incredible debt of gratitude to my family for stepping up — not just for the horses, but for me when I went through a challenging time in my life. I can’t thank them enough, they all stepped up — my mom, my brother, my sister-in-law, my niece, my girlfriend, everyone.”

He also said he felt a connection to his horse in their intertwined recoveries.

“I can relate, because we were going in that direction with the horse anyways, but it kind of hit home because recovery’s not quick,” Middleton said. “I did relate to the horse, and that’s why every time I’ve had a partner on a horse, one of the first things I establish is that we always do right by the horse every single time. It’s the first and foremost rule I apply to having partners, I’m always going to do what’s in the best interest of the horse.”

With Wednesday’s win under Bob Loblaw’s belt, Middleton said the group behind the horse hopes to build back to his pre-injury performance level. The gelding never threatened in five starts at Mohawk Park — two sixth-place finishes, a seventh, and two ninths — before dropping in class on Jul. 8. Those races cleared earnings from two years ago out of the horse’s chartlines, allowing him to race in lower-level conditions. Middleton said the five-year-old’s performances in the coming months will inform their plans going forward, and that it is a tough process to train a horse back to the Woodbine Mohawk Park level.

Middleton said that regardless of level, he wants to see the best from the gelding.

“I just hope the horse does well,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if we’re at Grand River, or Georgian, or a combination of both. We might have to wait until fall when things start to slow down a little and the competition gets a little less fierce here.”

Bob Loblaw is entered again tonight at Georgian Downs in an upper-tier conditioned race. He is listed as the 8/5 morning-line favourite.

by Nicholas Barnsdale, for Harnesslink