161st day of 2009 - 204 remaining
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
OFF TO THE RACES DAY
The sport of harness racing was first covered in a newspaper in the
A pacer named Yankee won the mile at Harlem Race Track in New York.
Yankee had the pace down correctly: simultaneously thrusting out the
Yankee won, but the all-time high for pacer victories goes to Single
G, a horse that won 262 races from 1918 through 1926. And Yankee
1959): the Cane Pace (Yonkers Raceway, NY), the Little Brown Jug
(Delaware County Fair, Delaware, OH) and the Messenger Stakes held at
various locations.
For most, however, harness racing is synonymous with trotting races.
The difference between pacers and trotters is in their gait. Trotters
use the diagonally opposite legs. The all-time high for trotter
victories goes to Goldsmith Maid, who won 350 races from 1864 through
1877. The triple crown for trotters includes the most famous and
richest race in North American harness racing, the Hambletonian. The
Kentucky Futurity and Yonkers Trot complete the trio.
Trotting races go back in history to 1554 when they were first held in
Valkenburg, the Netherlands. There are also traces of trotters in
England in the 1590s. In the U.S., 1870 marks the date that the
National Trotting Association was founded. It was first titled:
National Association for the Promotion of the Interests of the
Trotting Turf.Great drivers, like Stanley Dancer (he won the Triple
Crown of trotting twice, and of pacers once), have made harness racing
a major spectator sport, complete with pari-mutuel wagering in many
states. See the horses line up across the track. They start behind a
moving gate that takes a full lap to get the horses up to speed. The
electric gate then folds away and the horses pulling sulkies (the
2-wheeled wagon the jockey sits in) and jockey
are, literally, off to the races! There they goooo!
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