Preseason with - Dale Desruisseaux

Congratulations on a breakout year. 11 wins and $600,000 CDN in earnings. What do you think attributes to such a strong season?

Thank you! It was a great year overall and I don’t really have many complaints on how the year unfolded. Of course you have the couple horses that didn’t pan out the way they were maybe training in the beginning of the year, but that can be said about every year. We had a great group of two year olds last year and a lot of them achieved great success. As with any good year, it all comes down to the stock that you have in the barn and I was fortunate to be trusted with some good horses from my owners.

How has the start of your 2025 season been, and how many horses will you have in training this year?

So far so good. I feel the weather so far has been a little more cooperative than the past few years so it has allowed us to get training without too many hiccups. Hopefully that continues. This year the barn is expanding a little bit and it’s looking like we will be between 25-30 horses. We will have a good mixture of younger and older stock. So it should be an exciting year.

Are there any horses you are excited about this season?

2025 will be an interesting year for my stable. This is the first year I will have a couple two year olds that my good friend and I bred together. It will be exciting from seeing them be born and now getting a chance to get them to the races. We also have the two year olds from last year returning and with that come some high expectations. We have “Church and State” coming back this year. He was 2 for 2 at Woodbine last year, we took a shot with him down at Turfway this winter that didn’t work out. It was a very rough winter for training there and I really believe the track wasn’t to his liking. Excited to get him over to the grass this year. We also have “Bit of Music” coming back that won first time out last year. We’re hoping she can stretch out and possibly get to the Oaks, but we will see how far she will stretch out before making that plan.

What is your goal for the 2025 season?

As with every year going forward you just hope for a successful and healthy year for everyone, horse and human alike. Of course we would love to add on to our win and money earned, it would be really great for our stable to get to a race like the Oaks or some stake races. I think with the quality of horses continuing to improve every year those goals can become a reality this year.

In your 13 years of training what is the most valuable lesson you learned that you can pass onto someone looking to become a trainer?

I think the most important thing anyone in this industry whether it be a trainer, groom, jockey etc is to keep your head up at all times. In this industry there is always more down times then up but you have enjoy the ups that much more and keep them driving your success.

You are definitely one of the most well branded stables at Woodbine. Who makes all your swag?

Thank you! I take great pride in how my stable looks and we try hard to represent as well as we can. I have various companies make certain things whether it be for human or horses so just depends on what I’m ordering.

How do you manage such a large stable?

Management is always a work in process. This year especially with more horses comes more staff so there is little things I will do differently then previous years. More notebooks and record keeping as it’s much more difficult to keep track of everything. I also have to give credit to the staff I have as they are all very competent horse people and people I can rely on to make my life a little easier everyday.

If there anything else in the industry that you would do if you were not training?

That’s a good question. I’m not too sure about that. I really enjoy training and trying to get the best out of each individual horse so I’m not sure I would enjoy doing anything else in the industry. Maybe one day I will be forced to take a different route but until then I will continue to try and achieve more success.