Bettor's Delight and Real Desire, North America's top two pacing colts, will do battle one final time for an O'Brien Award in the Three-Year-Old Pacing Colt category.
Bettor's Delight, owned by John Grant of Hornby and trained by Scott McEneny, won $1.7 million in an exceptional season that included victories in the $1 million North America Cup, the coveted Little Brown Jug and the Tattersalls Pace.
Real Desire, his nemesis throughout the season, won $1.6 million for owners Brittany Farms of Illinois, Robert Burgess and Karin Olsson Burgess of Milton and Perretti Farms of New Jersey. Trained by Blair Burgess, Real Desire was at the top of his game when he won the Meadowlands Pace, the Hoosier Cup and the Breeders Crown.
Two past winners of an O'Brien Award in the Driver of the Year category will be looking for a repeat performance. Randy Waples, Canada's Driver of the Year in 1998 and Chris Christoforou, who won the award in 1999, are the 2001 nominees.
Waples, 36, of Milton, Ontario, is celebrating a career year having driven 540 winners and horses to unprecedented earnings in excess of $10.4 million. He shattered numerous records on the Woodbine and Mohawk circuit and scored his first Breeders Crown victory.
Christoforou, 30, of Milton, Ontario, also enjoyed a career year, driving 610 winners and horses to earnings of $9.3 million.
In the Trainer of the Year Category, Bob McIntosh will look to claim his unprecedented eighth victory in that category while John Bax's first ever nomination for this award is a fitting ending to a career season.
McIntosh, 49, of Windsor, Ontario, trained 146 winners and horses to $3.2 million in earnings. Some of his stable's top performers this year included Western Shooter, who is nominated in the Two-Year-Old Pacing Colt category, Electrical Art, a nominee in the Three-Year-Old Pacing Filly division and Lady Graceful, one of the top juvenile pacing fillies in the Ontario Sires Stakes and a winner of $524,365.
Bax, 47, of Peterborough, Ontario, trained horses to $1.8 million in earnings including O'Brien Award nominee Duke Of York and Canadian Breeders Champion Pepi Lavec. Veteran trotter Goodtimes, a past O'Brien Award winner, also gave Bax reason to celebrate when he eclipsed the $2 million mark in career earnings.
