In over 35 years in the sulky, driver Bill Gale drove won 6,375 races, but none were more memorable than winning his first Breeders Crown in 1986 with Sunset Warrior at Garden State Park in New Jersey for trainer, friend and fellow LaSalle, ON resident Bob McIntosh.
“It was such a big thing at the time for an Ontario-based guy to go to the States and win a race of that stature. I think they were going for $800,000 or so that night,” Gale said. “I think that was the win that kind of pushed me into the spotlight a little.”
Gale will officially be inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame on Wednesday night (Aug. 5) in Mississauga, ON. Normally a man of few words, Gale was talkative when speaking about Sunset Warrior and that night.
“He was just a great little horse and he was very easy to drive. They had the elimination and the final the same night. I just took him away at the back of the field in the first heat and let him pace home. He finished third. He paced home strong as hell in 27 (seconds) and a piece. That was huge back then. Then in the final I gave him a chance to race and he really responded.”
Veteran U.S. racing writer Jay Bergman said Gale was instrumental in Sunset Warrior pulling off a bit of an upset over a bigger horse named Redskin.
“Bill Gale never made a bad move in driving this horse. He was calm and kept the horse relaxed and never over worked,” Bergman said. “If there's one thing I recall about Gale it was that he used the whip sparingly… He could make a horse go fast with his hands primarily and rarely did he rely on the stick.”
Gale said he’s proud he became known as tactician on the track. “I’d like to think it’s true that I wasn’t just a guy sending every horse to the front and racing them like they were 1-9. I could and did race them all different ways,” he said.
Five years after Sunset Warrior’s Breeders Crown triumph, Gale would win two Crowns on the same card at Pompano Park in Florida — including a world record with trotter King Conch and an upset of the fellow 2015 Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame inductee Artsplace with Three Wizzards. Yet, the Sunset Warrior victory would remain his personal career highlight prior to his induction to the Hall of Fame.
Legends of the game such as fellow driver John Campbell and McIntosh — Hall of Famers in both Canada and the United States — made it clear when the 2015 ballot came out that Gale deserved to join them in Canadian Hall. Campbell said Gale was, “easily the best driver not yet enshrined.” McIntosh said Gale, “deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. We traveled all over the United States and Canada and he won a lot of stakes races for me. He had the lightest set of hands. He could keep a bad horse quiet. He was very good with them. Strategically as a driver he was right up there with the best, though he was underrated all the time.”
Gale, who last drove in 2007 and had his career cut short due to injuries sustained in a number of racing accident, said he was humbled by those and other comments, as well as the induction itself, of course.
“It’s a great honour and it’s an achievement I’m proud of and not many people have,” Gale said softly. “It seems to me that it went by quickly. I was lucky because it was never work for me. It was always fun when I went to the racetrack at night to race.”
Gale, 66, was one of Canada’s leading drivers from the 1970s into the 1990s. Between 1982 and 1997, Gale recorded 16 consecutive $1 million+ seasons. In his career, he drove the winners of $42.1 million in an era before slots-fattened purses. In 1991, Gale was honoured with an O’Brien Award as Canada’s Driver of The Year following a season where he exceeded $3.2 million in purse earnings. He holds the record for the most driving wins at Windsor Raceway (some 3,500) and was inducted into the Windsor / Essex County Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, Gale spent the latter part of his career driving at Mohawk Racetrack in Campbellville.
He also suffered more than his share of misfortune, breaking some 27 bones in racing accidents, including a horrific wreck at Mohawk in 1997 that sidelined him for 18 months after the bones in one leg shattered and were driven into his knee. One month after returning to the track, Gale suffered a broken pelvis in an accident in Windsor.
Yet, through it all, only a select few ever proved they could drive a horse as well as Bill Gale.
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