“I still wake up wondering if it actually did happen. It’s still very surreal to me,” said trainer Kathy Cecchin when asked about Desperate Man’s 2021 Pepsi North America Cup win, 22 months after the Shadow Play gelding took his connections on the ride of a lifetime.
The future Pepsi North America Cup winner with the famous ownership story – Cecchin and her husband John gifted their daughter Nikki Davies and son-in-law Paul Davies half ownership of Desperate Man as a wedding present – came from humble beginnings.
“We didn’t really ever have very high expectations,” said Cecchin. “He’s a May 31 foal, and so because he was a late foal, and he was quite big even as a two-year-old, we were just always day-to-day with him.”
The tide started shifting when Trevor Henry, a friend of the Cecchin’s who trains his horses at their Arthur, Ont., farm drove Desperate Man in his first qualifier, and he paced the final quarter in :26.
“He was still flopping around out there, couldn’t keep up with the starting gate, and his own gait was not very organized,” said Cecchin. “But after that baby race Trevor said he wants to do it, if he could just get a little bit sorted out.”
He sorted himself out enough to make six starts in his pandemic-disrupted freshman season, all in the Ontario Sires Stakes (OSS), winning three of them, and hitting the board in two other efforts.
Then his two-year-old season ended with an injury that required a full winter of stall rest.
By next June, the standard time for the Pepsi North America Cup, which was moved to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he was a step or two behind his divisional rivals.
Through two conditioned starts and an OSS Gold division, all at Woodbine Mohawk Park, he failed to hit the board before heading to Georgian Downs for an OSS Gold leg.
“Going to Georgian Downs, I don’t know if it was the change of scenery, but it seemed to really wake him up,” said Cecchin. “He was off the gate, then he was first up, and things didn’t go his way. He’d shown he could be fast when things went his way, but he hadn’t shown the heart of a fighter just yet. That race just changed him, gave him more confidence, and he continued to get better after that race.”
After that, Desperate Man hit his stride. He finished second in consecutive starts, an OSS Gold division, and a division of the Somebeachsomewhere, setting him up for the Pepsi North America Cup.
Even then, Cecchin was nervous about putting him in the big race, but her partners trusted her decision making.
“When I said to Nikki and Paul, ‘what do you think about the $8,000 starting fee?’ They said, ‘you do what you think is right’, and I was like what if ‘I don’t know what is right.’”
Cecchin had never had a horse in this position.
“The build up from the Somebeachsomewhere to the [Cup] elimination to the Final, it was stressful,” said Cecchin. “I just kept saying all along I didn’t want to put him in the Cup if he wasn’t going to be competitive. I didn’t want to put him in if he was going to be 99-1 just so we could say we raced in the North America Cup.”
The decision was made to enter him, and he proved up to the task, qualifying for the final with an impressive runner-up in his elim, chasing Bulldog Hanover home in an eye-popping 25.4 final quarter.
On race night, Cecchin still was wary of thinking he could win. The betting public was less so, he was the 7-1 third choice. When the race started Cecchin was in his paddock stall, unable to watch.
“Nikki was with me, and as they were in the backstretch, she was like ‘we have to go now.’ I could see he had power, but it wasn’t that I thought he would win, I thought he was going to be there.”
Desperate Man cleared the field in deep stretch, crossing the line in 1:49.3.
“I was in complete shock when he won,” said Cecchin. “So many people who saw it will say they thought I was going to pass out. I don’t really remember any of it. I remember hugging Nikki, and hugging Paige Austin and the wind kept blowing the cooler off, and my friend was trying to tie the cooler, and I remember all of this because I watched it on the replay. I don’t really remember it.”
The win in the $1 million race was by far the biggest of Cecchin’s career, and a huge group of people converged in the winner’s circle to celebrate, something that wouldn’t even have been possible under pandemic restrictions had the race been in its traditional June slot.
“I felt really blessed there were so many people there to support him,” said Cecchin. “Sometimes it’s really surprising because you think it just matters to you, and I was so focused on him.”
Looking back on the experience, Cecchin has fond memories, but is also candid about how stressful and intense competing at the highest level of harness racing was.
“Honestly, if I had to do it over, it would be a different experience,” said Cecchin. “We had never been involved with a horse that was in the NA Cup, and it was very overwhelming. If you’re Ron Burke or Tony Alagna, they do it every year, and are professional about it. We knew it was once in a lifetime, and there would never be another horse like him, and it seemed so heavy.”
(OSS)