There’s something about the North Battleford Exhibition Grounds that agrees with what Kris Molle does every time he races around the chuckwagon track.
For the third straight year, Molle kicked off his Canadian Professional Chuckwagon Association season on a winning note as the Chauvin, Alta. product once again won the season opener for the tour Sunday afternoon.
“I’m really not sure what it is to be honest, but I think there’s some luck involved for sure,” said Molle, who was born in Watson.
“Everything’s new when you start a season so there’s always some challenges with that. It can be getting something to how the horses react or dealing with the elements. There’s always a challenge to deal with.”
The biggest challenge Molle dealt with during the weekend was being without the services of his long-time outrider Aric Pare, who suffered a broken jaw Friday night when he was kicked in the face by his spooked horse at the start of a heat race.
With Pare out of action, Ryan Johnson and Logan Pethick stepped up their game to help Molle earn the win.
“It gets you out of your comfort zone when you lose a guy like Aric,” Molle said. “We seem to both know what each other is going to do out there at all times.
“You have to learn what the other guys do, but we all adapted to it and having Aric here Sunday to cheer us on was a nice boost.”
Molle and his PWM Steel sponsored wagon entered the final day of racing in second place in the aggregate standings, as he was a little over a minute and a half behind St. Walburg’s Jamie Laboucane.
Racing in the final heat of the day, Molle set the fastest time of the day with a run of 1:04.01 to set a three-day total time of 3:12.84
That was enough to give him the title, as Laboucane had a two second penalty in the previous heat race to finish in second place with a total time of 3:14.01
“I knew that I had to run that last race clean if I wanted to have any shot at the title,” Molle said.
“After that, you just have to wait and see what unfolds at the end. It worked out for me this time, but it was unfortunate that Jamie had a penalty in his heat.”
Bob Van Eaton of Clive, Alta. finished in third place, while Dewberry, Alta.’s Dallas Dyck and Wayne Knight of St. Walburg rounded out the top five.
The CPCA tour will be back in action this weekend for a three-day event in Poundmaker starting Friday.
