Redmond Doucet waves to the crowd as he heads to the winner’s circle with Dirty Bobby and trainer Lennan MacIsaac after earning his 1,000th career win on Sunday, June 21 at Inverness Raceway.
-by Bill Dunphy
Sunday, Oct. 7, 2001. Inverness Raceway. Acushla wins in 2:07.1 for owners Geraldine and Bernie Gillis.
The driver? A young 19-year-old Redmond Doucet Jr. with his first career win as a harness racing driver.
Twenty-five years and 999 wins later and Doucet became just the third driver out of Inverness to log 1,000 career wins – joining Joe Campbell and Alex (Trapper) MacQuarrie.
Doucet won three of Sunday afternoon’s seven races to reach the milestone mark, which he hit in the $1,300 fourth race with his own pacer Dirty Bobby.
“It was pretty nice actually, quite an accomplishment, especially doing it with my own horse.”
Doucet clearly remembers his first win back in 2001.
“It was pretty exciting, but I had no idea if I was going to be cut out to be a driver or how far I would take it. I have a competitive nature and if I wasn’t going to be good at it then I wasn’t going to keep at it,” he said.
What makes the accomplishment even more meaningful is that most of Doucet’s wins were at Inverness Raceway.
“I’ve driven a little at other tracks, Northside, Truro, Charlottetown, but the majority of my wins were here, and getting to 1,000 doesn’t happen every day. It’s hard to stay in the game that long.”
He has had some memorable days at Inverness Raceway, winning five races in a day three times (2012, 2020 and 2022). And on Sept. 20, 2015, Doucet scored a six-bagger, including winning the $6,000 Inverness Invitational with Jackie Matheson-trained Clic K. The five other wins were with Howmacs Angel, his own trainee Rez Rampage, Blackriver Nannie, Island Reactor and Jackson County.
Doucet had a career year in 2020, picking up 90 wins in 313 starts, with 75 seconds and 36 thirds for earnings of $170,307.
“That was a COVID year and I wasn’t afraid of COVID,” he said with a laugh. “So I traveled a little more to get some drives in.”
He was named Driver of the Year that season at Truro Raceway.
As well, Doucet has represented Atlantic Canada twice at the National Driving Championship – in 2018 at Grand River and 2024 at the Hippodrome in Quebec. He won the Atlantic championship in Charlottetown in 2024.
Overall, Doucet has 4,584 lifetime starts. Along with his 1,000 wins, he has 824 seconds and 653 thirds, with earnings topping $1,492,000.
“I’m happy with the way it turned out,” he said of his career. “The body gets a little sore, and you take a few spills, so we’ll see how far it goes. Who knows, once the weather gets a little nice, I might go to the beach and take a Sunday off.”
In his third win on Sunday, Doucet sent Dirty Bobby first-up from third after a tepid second panel and wore down pacesetter Fear The Shadow and Zach Mullins entering the stretch for the half-length victory in 2:02. Dirty Bobby notched his second win in a row in taking the optional $5,000 claiming pace.
Doucet shares ownership of the six-year-old Pang Shui-Fleurke gelding with Andy Stewart. Lennan MacIsaac handles the training duties.
A pair of wins in the first two races helped Doucet reach the milestone on Sunday. Those wins were courtesy of Drink Up Mouchacho from the J.J. MacDonald stable (You can stop cashing J.J.’s cheques now Snag!) and Philthy Phil, another MacIsaac trainee owned by Doucet.
Doucet almost picked up another victory with trainer John MacLellan’s homebred Whats Up Doc leading into the stretch of the feature finale, the $2,000 winners-over pace, but favoured Sea Laird caught him in a photo finish to repeat in the top class for trainer-driver Zach Mullins and local co-owner Douglas Lowthers.
A 10-year-old Custard The Dragon-Devil Likes It Hot gelding, Sea Laird rallied widest of all off the final turn to prevail by a quarter-length in a two-minute mile. Whats Up Doc, who has hit the board in all of his seasonal starts, settled for second again while Shir Gain and Rodney Gillis finished third.