Memories

[the believer]

.... Fellow members , i have created this sub board after reading the responses and also posting a reply to a message posted by Jay yesterday. I think we all have stories or memories to tell ,i do hope you will enjoy posting/reading them here .
...I have so many memories ,it began with a visit to a farm at the age of thirteen ,they raced horses under the Superior and Hieland names . I jogged my first horse on this farm track, and went my first training mile behind a home bred named Superior Lady. I later would travel to tracks like Garden City Raceway , Greenwood and Peterborough's Exhibition Raceway with the trainer to help out. I basically hot walked what seemed a hundred
miles and learned to become a terrific whistler in the test barn. One weeknight after school , i traveled with the trainer to Garden City Raceway over 100 miles away, Hieland Battles who was a very nice horse, always raced in the later races , the horse won and i got the honor of taking him to the test barn-it seemed like hours and more hours of whistling to get him to go .I often wonder now, why they didn't draw blood , but that was back then and this is a memories board. I got home in the wee hours of the morning ,an still went to school for 9am , ah to be young and able to do things like that without a care.
Lots more stories to tell ...later.

[the believer]

Memories , i've never forgotten the racing of early years , when i started attending the races the b-tracks pacers and trotters were tearing up the track on avg between 2:13 and 2:18 , not even a warmup mile time today. The times may have been slow but the people came to watch the battles on track between local stars , Singleland and Freddy Pick or would Jimmy Bing be in the feature trot or pace ( equally good ) at both gaits. Would (Retta) lady driver hang on with Ladybird Spencer after opening up her 20 length lead..yes , those days were so much more about the racing than the mighty buck.
TO BE CONTINUED

[jay44224]

In the summer of 69 my family moved from the city to the sticks in Northwest New Jersey- late summer on a Sunday - we went for along ride through the countryside of New York and ened up at a place I had never been before, Monticello Raceway. I had been to other tacks Mainly Yonkers, Belmont, and Aqueduct. But this place was in the middle of nowhere and you would not have known it by the hussle and bussle.

The thing that stuck out at first was it was Harness racing during the day- something I really did not witness before.

By the time I finished High School and was going to college- Sunday afternoon's at Monty was where I could be found. Watched many raises on nice sunny days in that Catskill air. But the one day that always stands out was in the eraly 80's not sure what year - but an aged pacer was coming in to race in the $10,000 invitational.

Rambling Willie - seemed to be bigger than life and a large crowd came to wager on this race
Willie did not disappoint and actually made it look quite easy.

[the believer]

Jay i to was fortunate enough to see Rambling Willie caputure the Canadian Pacing Derby at Greenwood Raceway in Toronto( he won it 3 differnt years), i also saw him up close on a visit to the Kentucky Horse Park ,along with John Henry the great thoroughbred. I copied his mini -bio to remind us all what an iron horse he was.

Rambling Willie-picture is at the bottom.


Rambling Willie (April 18, 1970 - August 24, 1995) was a harness racing horse, more specifically a bay pacing gelding sired by Rambling Fury and out of Meadow Belle by Meadow Gold. He was trained and driven by Bob Farrington.

Rambling Willie was born on a farm in Monroeville, Indiana.

He won 128 races in 304 starts, both records and won the U. S. Pacing Championship in 1976. At the 1975 Canadian Pacing Derby he tied for first in a dead heat with Pickwick Baron, and won outright in 1976 and 1977, setting a best time for the mile of 1:54.3.

Rambling Willie was put down in 1995 and was buried in the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky.


Awards and recognition
He was voted North American aged pacer of the year in 1975, 1976, and 1977, and was retired in 1983 as the leading standardbred money winner of all time, earning over $2 million. He was inducted into the Indiana Standardbred Hall of Fame in 2003.

A biography of the horse was published: Rambling Willie: The Horse that God Loved! (ISBN 0-910119-42-2

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