Canadian born female jockey lights up the race book

How’d you like to chat with and get an autographed photo of cute Canadian model, television personality and topnotch lady jockey? With racing at a pre-holiday lull again this week a short drive to the SouthPoint race book in Sin City was your best option.

Meet Chantal Sutherland, a 35-year-old blonde beauty who just missed winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic when her mount Game On Dude was nipped at the wire by Drosselmeyer.

Born in Alberta and raised in Ontario, Sutherland began her racing career 10 years ago at Toronto’s Woodbine Race Course and since has chalked up nearly 900 victories as she follows in the footsteps of Hall of Famer Julie Krone.

The soft-spoken lady, who has been featured in Sports Illustrated and Vogue magazines as well as reality shows on Animal Planet, lit up the new 150-seat race book like Fourth of July fireworks, autographing photos to the delight of a packed weekday crowd of racing enthusiasts. Many brought their own cameras to catch a pic with this rising riding star.

Bits ’n’ pieces

The stars shone bright for 2009 European Horse of the Year, Sea The Stars, at Newmarket’s Annual December Foal Sales this week. Five of the eight top prices were sired by the Irish-bred stallion with the top prize fetching more than $734,000.

Sea The Stars concluded a fabulous sophomore campaign two years ago by winning the world renowned Arc de Triomphe in Paris in early October. He then promptly retired to stud. Many racing experts thought he could have won the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic had his connections chose to ship him.

One of Europe’s brightest “Stars” during the first 10 years of the new century, he won six Grade-1 races including the 2,000 Guineas and the Epsom Derby.

I ran into Rick Jussel and his attractive wife Julie at the CasaBlanca the other night. We got taking horses and he told me of probably his biggest racing gamble. Rick and Julie and were having a quiet day in the race book when a “gang” of players from Utah touted and toasted a 40-1 Utah colt running at Santa Anita. “They had formed sort of a syndicate and traveled down from Salt Lake just for this one race,” Rick told me. The group put together a bankroll for this “Utah maiden” that had probably won a string of non-sanctioned races back in Utah.”