Toye enjoying run of winners

AUBURN, Wash. – Joe Toye arrived at Emerald Downs in mid-May and has been on a profitable roll ever since. The trainer recorded his first victory of the meet May 25 and then four more in quick succession while missing the board with just two of his past 13 starters. He’s winning at a 38 percent clip – unsustainable, to be sure, but lots of fun in the moment.

Toye will have three more chances on Saturday’s nine-race card, with strong contenders in races 4 (Tobiah’s Journey) and 5 (Cool Toddy) and a likely longshot, Add Some Alcohol, in race 7.

“It’s always a good feeling,” Toye said of his winning burst. “That’s what we aspire to do. We always like to feel good because we know how to feel bad – chicken one day and feathers the next.

“I can’t really explain it. When you get horses on an upswing and they’re fit and sound and in the right spot – if you don’t have all that, the stars don’t line up. But when it’s right and you get lucky – good breaks, good riders, good spots – anybody can win. It’s just having the right horses in the right spots.”

Toye, 64, said he got his training start in Canada, where he joined his brothers on a breeding farm in Manitoba. The brothers eventually left, but “I liked it, so I just continued on with it,” Toye said.

For the past 15 years, he has spent summers at Emerald and winters at Turf Paradise in Phoenix. He keeps a family home in Yakima, Wash. The arrangement works, so Toye keeps plugging away with his band of claimers, many of them hard-knocking veterans who prefer a route of ground. At the moment, he has 24 horses in training.

“When you have to work outside with horses, Arizona is the best place in North America to be in the winter,” he said. “And in the summertime, you can’t beat this place. It’s a great facility. We have a nucleus of owners that we’ve trained for here for the past 20 years. They have Washington-breds, this is home for them, and they want to see their horses run. If we win a few races and do a little bit of good, everybody is happy.”

Toye’s horses rarely graduate to the stakes ranks. He has sent out more than 1,900 starters at Emerald and won just one stakes race, with a mare named Tajun during Emerald’s lone winter meeting in 1996. Tobiah’s Journey did finish fourth for Toye in a stakes over the winter at Turf Paradise, a 1 1/2-mile marathon on the grass. He’ll start for a $7,500 claiming tag Saturday.