Big Hug is really starting to like the annual Fall Classic races.

Saturday she romped in the Alberta Classic Distaff for three and up fillies and mares at Century Mile.

Last year she won the Fall Classic Alberta Oaks for three-year-old Alberta-bred fillies. Two years ago she took the Sturgeon River Fall Classic for two-year-old fillies.

Three Classic appearances. Three wins. It’s hard to argue with perfection.

“She loves the The Fall Classic,” said trainer and co-owner Rick Hedge. “And so do I,” added Hedge, who has won several other Fall Classic races over the years including Regal Max, who won the Beaufort in 2018; Mr. Shadar who took the Red Diamond Express in 2010; CR Jag, who won the Premier’s in 2006 and Beau Brass, whose scintillating career included two Speed to Spare Championships and the Beaufort in 2003.

The three Fall Classic wins for Big Hug were worth a total of $90,000 as she boosted her career earnings to $367,900.

“The Fall Classic races show case the best Alberta-breds,” said Hedge, who bought Big Hug for just $3,400 at the 2021 Alberta Yearling Sale and then sold half to Lori and Martin Neyka’s Empire Equestrian stable, whom he has been training for about a dozen years.

Big Hug was consigned by breeder Chalet Stables.

“They’re really good for the owners and the breeders.”

Saturday’s performance was a Tour de Force for Big Hug, who has now won 11 of her 19 appearances.

Facing just three other horses, Big Hug won by four lengths while being eased up through the final eighth of a mile under jockey Rafael Zenteno Jr.

The way she won it could have been 44 lengths.

“Easy,” said Hedge, 76, who has shot his age golfing three times. “Very easy.

“The plan was to lay just off Dance Shoes, stalk her pace and then make her move and that’s exactly what she did.

“Raffie just let her run her own race. He didn’t ask her until the top of the stretch.

“She’s at the top of her game right now,” said Hedge. “She hardly drank any water after the race and was hardly blowing. It was like she hadn’t even raced.”

Hedge said Big Hug was well named. “She likes to have a big hug. She really does. She’s a very snuggly horse. She’s so good to do anything with. She’s been a pleasure to be around. She’s been that way ever since she was broke as a baby.”

Hedge said he bought Big Hug because the filly looked at him and said ‘Buy me.’

So he did.

“I made a couple of bids on her and when the price went to $3,400 everyone else stopped bidding,” Hedge said of the daughter of Mr. Big out of the mare Temeeku, who broke her maiden for no tag at Del Mar, California.

“Of course I pay attention to breeding and bloodlines but I really just trust what I see in a horse and I really liked what I saw.

“I don’t know how high I would have gone on her but I liked her plenty for $3,400,” said Hedge, who was one of Alberta’s top jockeys before retiring from riding in 1988 with over 2,400 wins and began training - with a four-horse stable - the following year.

Hedge has now won 744 races as a trainer consequently giving him some 3,144 wins as a trainer or a jockey.

Hedge said initially Big Hug didn’t show the prowess or determination that she now has.

But it was a morning work on July 4, 2022 for the then unraced two two-year-old that opened everyone’s eyes.

“She was nothing out of the ordinary until that morning. She breezed three furlongs in 35 seconds.”

That was the day everything changed.

“From that day on she was a runner.”

Big Hug won her first four races winning her maiden debut by three and three-quarter lengths despite stumbling at the break and getting bumped. Then, she took the Princess Margaret by three-and-a-quarter lengths, the Sturgeon by a length and three-quarters and then a total display of power in the $100,000 CTHS Sales Stake by more than eight lengths.

She was overwhelmingly named Alberta’s champion two-year-old filly of 2022.

She didn’t let up. As a three-year-old, Big Hug won the Chariot Chaser, CTHS Sales Stake and the Oaks and was named Champion Three-Year-Old Filly.

Now, she is clearly on line to win Champion Aged Mare honours having won two allowance races, the R.K. ‘Red’ Smith - by five and three-quarter lengths and a race that Hedge says was the best performance of her still young career - and now the Fall Classic Distaff.

Hedge said the plan is to run next in the Three and Four-year-old stake on October 4 in Calgary.

“After that she’s going to get a rest. Then I’ll take her south and run her in Phoenix, Arizona.

“She’s at the top of her game,” said Hedge, who has been riding horses since he was five on his family’s farm.

Hedge said that even though he didn’t know anything about jockeys in his Grade 10 high school yearbook he wrote that he either wanted to be a rodeo rider or a jockey.

How prescient is that?

It was Hedge’s midget hockey coach, Bud Storms that sent him on his way.

“The coach said I was the right size to be a jockey. He said he owned a couple of horses and said I should go to Northlands and start galloping horses.”

Hedge was 20 and never looked back even though he only rode one horse in all of 1969.

“Allies Hope,” recalled Hedge. I rode him 12 times for Red Smith. We had five wins, four seconds and three thirds.

A natural, Hedge won just about all of Alberta’s stakes races as a jockey including the 1970 Canadian Derby with Driving Home.

He’s done the same as a trainer.

“Beau Brass was probably the best horse I ever trained. He won just under $500,000. Then probably Mr. Shadar.”

But the way Big Hug is running she could easily surpass both of those two horses.

“Big Hug is solid muscle,” said Hedge, a fiercely competitive man who has been known to throw his golf clubs in disgust after bad shots - some of which were left in pieces.

“She’s got a big heart and she’s very athletic.

“I really think she’s something special.”

STOCK REPORT - In the six other Fall Classic stakes races JJ’s Caper took the Beaufort; Solo Ring won his fourth race in just five starts this year capturing the Red Diamond Express; Smart Play easily won the Alberta Breeders’ Handicap; Destin to be Great put on an explosive move from last place to win the Alberta Oaks going away and paying $48.90 in what was her maiden victory; Smoke Daddy impressively won the Alberta Premier’s in what was also his maiden victory and favourite No More Lies took the Sturgeon River by a length over Nasas Princess.

Also on the card was the $107,944 Two-Year-Old Quarter horse Canada Cup Futurity which was won by favourite First Famous Prize for leading quarter horse trainer Buckey Stockwell and leading quarter horse jockey O.A. Hernandez.

Very sad news: Dale ‘Colonel’ Saunders, eight times Alberta’s leading trainer and a winner of 2,177 races, and a consummate horseman, passed away this weekend. Saunders, unanimously named Canada’s E. P. Taylor Award of Merit winner of 2022.



A quiet, humble man, Saunders had great success on Alberta Fall Classic Day winning a dozen of those races.

Harness racing returns to Century Mile this Saturday, September 21.

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Author: The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty.