We all remember where we were when we made the biggest score of our horseplaying career. In Mike Yurczyk’s case, he was working the cash register at the Bo Diddley’s sandwich stand at Canterbury Park. That’s where he spent most of last Sunday anyway.

Yurczyk had established a successful career in the insurance industry before deciding a few years ago to shift into more entrepreneurial endeavors. He now owns and operates three Bo Diddley’s stores—one at the track, one in Eden Prairie, Minn., and one on the campus of Best Buy headquarters in nearby Richfield.

“It’s the world’s best cold sandwich,” Yurczyk said of his prized product.

After the recent Spa & Surf Showdown, Yurczyk can claim to be the world’s best handicapper—or at least the world’s best handicapper last weekend. He won $196,057 in the two-day, Saratoga-and-Del Mar tourney, holding off runner up Charles Welch by the narrow margin of 24 cents. It was his biggest win ever playing the horses.

“I’ve had a lot of nice five-figure scores,” the 43-year-old said, “but this is the first one safely into six figures.”

That lifetime-best conquest in the $533,984 Spa & Surf Showdown originated from a very humble starting stake.

“I can’t remember if I spent $147 in a qualifier or started off in a feeder, but that’s how I got in,” Yurczyk said. 

And that was the only entry he played.

“One entry is all I would ever want to play in one of these events,” he explained. “I don’t ‘Set it and forget it.’ I’m very price-sensitive. One entry allows me to do it well…to manage it well with everything else I’m juggling.”

Experienced contest players are, of course, no strangers to chaos. They know that things can go south on them in a hundred different ways during a tournament. For the most part, though, that was not Yurczyk’s experience during this particular two days of competition.

“This may have been the very first contest I’ve ever played in where, when I had to make a choice between two horses in a race, I never made the wrong one,” he wondered aloud. Then he paused.

“Except for Napoleon Solo in the Travers,” he chuckled. “I should have gotten place money with him!”

One of his fortuitous coin flips came in Saturday’s 6th race at Del Mar. He liked two horses about the same. One was a 40-1 shot. The other was a 19-1 runner named Manee.

“I almost never go with the shorter shot when I’m torn between two, but that one horse was just taking no action at all. Eventually, I told myself that the betting public must have seen something negative that I missed. So I went with Manee.”

Good move. Manee prevailed and paid $41.00 to win and $13.60 to place. It would prove to be the largest single-race return in any race during the two-day Showdown.

Given the lack of longshots coming in, Yurczyk was going to have to cash some tickets if he was going to do well over the grueling two days. That’s exactly what he did—in bunches.

“The weekend was super streaky for me,” he recalled happily.

On Saturday’s Day 1—when Yurczyk finished third overall and earned a Day Bonus of $4,001—there were three separate instances in which he made collections in three consecutive races. On Sunday, he twice made cashes in four straight races.

“That was nice to do,” Yurczyk deadpanned.

The first of those two Sunday streaks came in the first four races of the day at Saratoga. Thanks to an 8-1 win with Cactus Closer in the opener, Yurczyk wrested the top spot away from Charles Welch. It was a lead Yurczyk would never relinquish…not that there weren’t a couple of anxious moments along the way.

Actually, Yurczyk was less anxious than others might have been had they been in his position immediately following the next-to-last race of the contest, the 9th at Del Mar. Charles Welch had been in 5th place, trailing Yurczyk by $54.04 when he hit 19-1 winner Arrowthegreat. (Yurczyk’s horse in that heat had finished off the board.) Yurczyk quickly noted, though, that 6-5 favorite Privman was the runner up. 

“I texted a friend before the prices went up. I said ‘I think I’m safe because the favorite ran second’” he reported. “I thought I’d be up about a dollar. But then he got $41.60 for his 19-1 win price…so that made things tighter.”

Twenty-four cents, to be precise. 

In the final race, Del Mar’s race 10, Yurzyk contemplated taking the #9 horse Call Me Sir, but instead went with #1 Midway Lane, who was the tepid 3-1 favorite.

“Even now, I regret playing that horse,” Yurczyk admitted. “I had gone into defensive mode, I guess.”

While the race was going on, he soon realized his 1 horse didn’t have much run. Meanwhile a pair of long shots, #2 Tribal and #7 Hothead, appeared dangerous on the front end. However, Yurczyk knew from refreshing the leaderboard that those two couldn’t hurt him because no one close enough had them. However Welch had Call Me Sir, and he was gaining quickly on the top pair late.

“No!” Yurczyk exclaimed desperately in mid-stretch. “Not this 9!”

Dread had already begun to set in.

“I’m watching the race on my phone, calculating in my head the amount that this bad-beat story was going to cost me.”

It wound up costing him nothing. Call Me Sir finished a half-length shy of catching the runner up, Hothead. Yurczyk had won $196,000.

He experienced the triumph in the best possible spot—at home with his wife Courtney and their sons Lincoln, 5, and Louis, 3, nearby.

“I was done with work after about the 2nd at Del Mar,” he said. “Then I watched the next couple races up on the 3rd floor at Canterbury, but I was home by the 5th.”

Where was Courtney during the decisive final race at Del Mar? Glued to a TV, perhaps, screaming her head off?

“She was unloading groceries,” Yurczyk said with Minnesota matter-of-factness. “There’s not much down time in our house with the boys. I had told her earlier that I was doing well in the contest and had a shot at over $100,000. She was mildly impressed and cautiously optimistic. She knows that there are all kinds of ups and downs in racing…just like in the restaurant business.

“I’m just thankful that my family is so patient because there are less frivolous things to be doing than watching horses run in a circle. I just love it so much more than any of the other sports, though. I think we should be introducing others to the game. And, to me, contests are the best way to play. The parimutuel world and the contest world need to cross over into each other more. For a lot of first-timers, contests could be what really attracts them to the game.”

What might Mike and Courtney do with their unexpected windfall? As of now, there are no grandiose plans. Even an entrepreneur needs to play things conservatively sometimes. 

“I’m sure we’ll take a trip to Vegas or somewhere,” he said on the Monday after his momentous triumph, “but for now there are just some debts, some business loans that I’d like to pay off—and employees that I’d like to give raises to.

“Not much is going to change. I was making sandwiches over the weekend…and I was making sandwiches today.”