Loto Canada
Just as the December 2011 Washington Thoroughbred Stallion Register was going to press, with the tribute to Loto Canada which appeared in the "Second Chances' column, it was learned that two-time Washington champion had passed away on New Year's Day due to the infirmities of old age. He had just officially turned 35.
Foaled on March 5, 1977, at his breeder Jerre Paxton's Kwik Lok Corporation - later renamed Northwest Farms - in Yakima, the son of Saltville-Petite Patootie, by Crafty Admiral, was purchased privately for a reported $5,000 by Lee and Patti Brauer, who had decided to spend some of their recent Canadian lotto winnings on a racehorse. Turned over to trainer Len Kasmerski, the medium-sized grandson of Tom Fool earned the first of four consecutive stakes races as a juvenile by taking the Blue Boy Stakes at Exhibition Park (now Hastings Racecourse). He also added victories in the Gottstein Futurity and Stripling and Tukwila stakes to his two-year-old tally and also finished third in the Grade 3 Sunny Slope Stakes at Santa Anita and the Washington Stallion Stakes en route to being named Washington champion two-year-old.
Sent to Oaklawn Park in the early spring of his sophomore year, Loto Canada defeated future Belmont Stakes (G1) winner and champion Temperence Hill in an allowance test at the Arkansas track.. He later won the William E. Boeing Stakes at Longacres by 10 lengths, equaling the track record and finished second to Pappy in the Longacres Derby. The speedy runner also ran third in both the Grade 2 Silver Screen and Grade 3 El Dorado handicaps at Hollywood Park that season and earned his second state title.
At four, Loto Canada won both the Seattle and Washington Championship handicaps and finished third in the Longacres Mile (G3) and Renton Handicap.
At five, he placed in two additional Longacres stakes. He was retired due to a hoof injury, but not before recording a record of 11-5-10 from 33 starts during his five-year career and earning $311,993 (SSI 10.82).
After spending most of his retirement years in the Yakima area, which was home to the Brauers, Loto Canada moved to the farm of John and Tanja Parker and family to be loved and spoiled during his final years.
In a note from John Parker to tell us of the champion's death, he reported that Loto Canada's right front leg just could no longer support his weight and the time had come to say goodbye.
"We thanked him for the courage and warmness he brought to my family and for showing us what a little horse with a gigantic heart can do. His head was on my wife's lap and she was stroking him as he took his last breath. The little horse that could was gone at the ripe old age of 35. We buried him that day in a place my wife picked out on our property with a salute and care package of a Snickers bar, mints, an apple, and a course, a cola. It's now the racetrack in the sky for a horse that gave it all."
-- Washington TBOA
"When Patti and Lee Brauer won a $1-million lottery two years ago, they went out and splurged on a pickup, a tractor and a $5,000 horse. Then they really got lucky."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...56/1/index.htm
