from the Ontario Sires Stakes

Innisfil, ON — As the Ontario Sires Stakes program celebrates its 40th anniversary this season, one of the ways to monitor its influence and success is the fact that many breeders and owners who were participating at the beginning are still active today.

Such is the case with Mary and Dave Lemon who operate Daylon Farms of Komoka, Ontario. Daylon is a compilation of their names. The couple started their breeding operation around the same time the OSS began and have seen their graduates race successfully in it ever since.

For many years the Lemons concentrated on pacers and two decades ago they just had one trotting mare in their broodmare band, but she has proved to be the foundation of their most successful offspring. Miss Marathon hailed from a family very successful in the OSS program. She was the first foal of former OSS star Marathon Lady, who earned $329,143 in the early 1980s.

While Miss Marathon didn’t duplicate her mother’s efforts on the racetrack, earning just $5,356, she certainly made up for it as a broodmare. The Lemons purchased the daughter of Jazz Cosmos at the conclusion of her 3-year-old season. Miss Marathon would produce a dozen foals for the Lemons over the years, her last arriving in 2006. Among them were successful OSS performers Daylon Marathon, who earned $167,600 and Daylon Marvel, a winner of $128,293.

The Lemons retained Daylon Marvel and once her racing days were over she joined the farms’ broodmare band. Among her early foals was the $310,162 winner Daylon Mystique and by the time her sixth foal was born the Lemons had downsized their operation and stopped selling their yearlings publicly, electing to keep them with Dave handling their training.

That sixth foal, a Kadabra colt named Daylon Magician, would prove to be the most successful horse the farm has produced thus far, with earnings of $1,672,217 to date. Close to $600,000 of that came during his 2- and 3-year-old seasons in the Ontario Sires Stakes. He has since gone on to compete successfully against the best trotters in the world.

The next foal from Daylon Marvel was the Pegasus Spur daughter Daylon Miracle who has $354,427 earned in her career to date. The 5-year-old mare is now owned and racing in Pennsylvania.

After the success of Daylon Magician the Lemons decided to breed Daylon Marvel back to Kadabra, the leading trotting sire in Ontario for the past several years, and in 2012 were rewarded with the filly they dubbed Daylon Mermaid.

Following in the family tradition, that filly will make her OSS and racing debut in Tuesday night’s (July 22) OSS Grassroots for rookie trotting fillies at Georgian Downs. She’s drawn post seven in the fifth of six C$18,000 divisions, race seven, and will have one of the country’s top drivers, Jack Moiseyev, at the lines. Moiseyev is quite familiar with the family as he drove and trained Daylon Magician for a good portion of his career.

The young fillies will square off in races one, three, four, five, seven and eight. To view the full program, click this link.