Jockey rides to five straight victories

By Dale Woodard on June 24, 2021.

Laurina Bugeaud was at the gate, and then just like that she was first over the finish line.

In fact, that happened five times in a row.

It made for quite the outing for the jockey June 12 at the Rocky Mountain Turf Club as Bugeaud pulled off the rarity of five consecutive wins.

“That’s not something that happens very often in any jockey’s career,” said Bugeaud, who is originally from Quesnel B.C. and now calls Stirling home. “Two weeks before that I won three in one day and two the next, so I won five that weekend.”

Back at the RMTC for another weekend Sunday afternoon, the veteran jockey who is riding into her 30th year reflected on what has to line up to produce a day at the races that equals five wins.

“It’s a combination of good horses that all happen to be in on the same day, because the horses are the main reason that things work, but then there is luck involved as well,” said Bugeaud.

But ultimately it comes down to the horsepower.

“My horses I had that day were a pretty lively bunch and I was confident it would be a good day,” said Bugeaud. “I didn’t realize it would be that good.”

The results thus far have been the product of some solid off-season training.

“I worked really hard this spring because I was a little out of shape and there weren’t really that many riders here to do the spring training. It kind of paid off,” said Bugeaud.

Other than that, her off-season training remained the same as it has for the past 30 years.

“I just helped the horses get ready and exercised them every day. I’m not one that can go to the gym and get fit. I have to be on a horse to do anything.”

This year marks Bugeaud’s 30th year of racing, but she has been at the race track for the past 35.

“I never wanted to be (a jockey). I knew I was too big and I still am,” she said. “But my sister had race horses. She was a trainer, and the year I graduated I thought I would go spend a couple of months with her and help her out and get away from home. I never left.”

Bugeaud was an exercise rider, doing the morning work on the horses for several years.

“I got a trainer’s license. I trained a bit and people kept bugging me that I should ride,” she said. “No horse scared me. I would get on anything when everybody else quit. So there were people who had horses no one would ride (and would say) ‘You should ride it.’ They finally talked me into it.”

Getting on her sister’s quarter-horses, Bugeaud’s mind was made up.

“I have no idea what it’s like to do drugs, but I think the kind of high I got from quarter-horses might be that way,” she said.

Bugeaud found success in Lethbridge, winning the Canada Cup Futurity in 1999 and 2004.

She chose the Rocky Mountain Turf Club for its abundance of work for jockeys, arriving in southern Alberta in 2005 and buying property in Stirling in 2007.

“When I moved here from B.C. it was because this is where there was lots of racing. In B.C. there wasn’t that much racing going on.”

In 2007, Bugeaud was enjoying a steady streak of wins before an accident sidelined her for nearly two years when she fell from an injured horse and was run over by another horse coming up behind.

“I got hurt pretty bad,” she said. “I was in the hospital for six weeks and in a coma for a while.”

She didn’t return to the track until 2009.

“It was a pretty big thing to come back to riding after that,” said Bugeaud.

Back in action this season, Bugeaud will follow the circuit north this summer.

“It goes from here and in July and August in Grande Prairie,” she said. “So I’ll be up there this year and then back here. Normally I stay here in the Lethbridge area or go to Leduc.”

Instead of setting specific season goals, Bugeaud has a simple approach.

“Every horse I get on, I ride to win or to least improve it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what the program says. If it says it’s going to run fifth and I can run third, then I’m happy with it.”

As for when she first started riding, did Bugeaud think she’d still be racing three decades later?

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I thought it would be five years and then I’d go get a real job, which I tried to do, and ended up back at the track.”

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