YORKTON - The dust will be flying at the Kelvington Summer Fair Aug. 1-3, as the Canadian Professional Chuckwagon Association hits the track to entertain fair goers.
Ryan Baptiste, who as of mid-July was leading CPCA drivers, said he is looking forward to the Kelvington races having missed the event in 2024.
While Kelvington isn’t the biggest centre the CPCA races at, it gained a good reputation after year one in 2024, said the Red Pheasant First Nation driver.
“Some of the smaller communities are the best communities,” Baptiste told Yorkton This Week. “. . . The feedback from drivers . . . was just second to none.”
Baptiste said he heard fans were actually going to the backstretch in Kelvington last year wanting to meet the drivers and see the horses.
“That’s awesome,” he said.
For Baptiste racing wagons is very much something that is in his blood.
“That’s kind of how I got into it, my Dad and Uncle raced. My older brother raced,” he said, adding horses have always been part of the family legacy.
Baptiste said when his grandfather passed he left his dad and four uncles a herd of 300 horses, adding for his grandpa horses were just a way of life, noting “he has his wagon and sleigh, that was the way he got around” choosing a team over a motor vehicle more often than not.
“Horses are a way of life for us. Horses are everything,” he explained.
With the experience of training horses, racing was a natural step, and for Ryan he always knew he would one day drive.
So how young was he when he knew?
“When you’re old enough to think about wagons and out riding,” he said, adding watching his family race it became “the stuff you sort of fantasized about . . . So I’m living the dream now.”
The dream is one of dedication though.
Baptiste said he’ll start the season as early as April 1, training, “depending on Mother Nature.”
By May he has moved the wagon and stock to Assiniboine Downs as a base for a summer that will see him race about 30 days with the CPCA, and this year began with two weeks of permit racing under the World Professional Chuckwagon Asso-ciation the loop many racers aspire too.
Baptiste likened the situation to hockey where you “want to play against the best,” and when driving chuckwagons it’s the same thing so you look to one day racing in the WPCA.
“There a little more horsepower there,” he said. “. . . That’s where I want to race. It’s kind of like the granddaddy of racing.”
In 2024 in Kelvington the top three overall racers were DJ King, Logan Gorst and Brad McCann.
This year Baptiste will look to push his way into the mix.
“I am looking forward to it,” he said, adding it’s important to travel as racers “to open up new ventures and new communities” to the thrills of professional chuckwagon racing.
