Josie Carroll
Josie Carroll is a Canadian Thoroughbred horse trainer and the first woman trainer to win the Queen's Plate, the oldest thoroughbred horse race in Canada and Canada's most prestigious race.
Born in Scarborough, Ontario, Ms Carroll undertook an equine studies course at Humber College before embarking on a racing career in 1975 in the employ of Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame trainer Mac Benson at Windfields Farm. She worked as an assistant trainer until 1994. She had early success with Tethra, owned by members of the prominent Eaton family.
In recent years she has been one of the leading trainers at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto and has won a number of graded stakes races both in Canada and in the United States.
Prior to the 2006 winning run, she had had one horse compete in the Queen's Plate. Her 2006 entry, Edenwold, earned the Sovereign Award as Canada's top two-year-old in 2005, but observers of the sport believed the colt could not sustain the Queen's Plate distance of a mile and a quarter. Ridden by jockey Emile Ramsammy, her winning horse was considered a long shot, going off at 16-1odds in the $1 million Grade I Queen's Plate.
Carroll is the second female trainer to take Canada's most prestigious race for three-year-old fillies, the Woodbine Oaks with Inglorious in 2011 – who went on to win the Plate for Carroll that same year. In 2019, she was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.
