Globe says Metalex's Fipke has a horse dream

2008-06-11 08:12 ET - In the News

The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday, June 11, edition that this past Saturday Triple Crown contender Big Brown came in last at the Belmont Stakes, eating the dust of Tale of Ekati. The Globe's Patricia Best writes that Tale of Ekati has a Canadian business pedigree. Tale of Ekati placed sixth in the race. It is owned by Northwest Territories diamond mine pioneer and Metalex Ventures chairman Chuck Fipke. In the early 1990s, Mr. Fipke, who hails from Edmonton but lives in Kelowna, B.C., had a hunch there were masses of diamonds in the ground in an area called Ekati northwest of Yellowknife. Now he is rich (even after a divorce eight years ago that is famous for its record $123-million settlement) and his Ekati diamond mine employs 1,500 people and produces 13,000 carats a day. The horse named after Mr. Fipke's diamond discovery embodies his other dream: to breed his own thoroughbred and win a fabled race like those of the Triple Crown. Unfortunately, his prospecting luck did not hold last Saturday as Tale of Ekati finished the race in sixth place. Big Brown's loss was the worst finish in the history of the Belmont for a horse that had won the first two legs of the Triple Crown.