Gillespie watches Hambletonian dream unfold

Ronnie Gillespie took Big Ranger (In Range) from an unraced colt to Ohio’s 2025 Horse of the Year without so much as a hiccup, winning nine of eleven starts with him, seven of those on Ohio’s own state-bred circuit before the horse had even left home turf. Then in late May, with no explanation given, the ownership group took the horse away.

Big Ranger now heads into Saturday’s 101st Hambletonian at the Meadowlands as the $1 million race’s 2-1 morning-line favourite, drawn from post four and chasing divisional champion Apex. He’ll get there with Anette Lorentzon training him and a new driver in the bike. Gillespie, the man who found him and shaped him, will spend the day back home at Scioto Downs instead.

Big Ranger is owned by Madison Global, a group made up of Anthony Miller, Wes Beachy, Reuben Herschberger and Benjamin Shrock, based out of Dundee, Ohio. It was that group who decided, without warning to Gillespie, to move the horse on. Lorentzon had no prior relationship with the owners before their call came in. She’s no stranger to this race though, having driven Guardian Angel As in the 2017 Hambletonian.

Gillespie told Press Pros Magazine, “That was a big disappointment.”

There isn’t much more he’s said publicly beyond that, and what he has said has mostly been about the horse rather than the decision itself. Gillespie has described Big Ranger as the best trotter he believes has come through Ohio in years, and he’s said driving in the Hambletonian was a lifelong dream of his, one that looked within reach with this horse before the phone call in May took it away.

The record backs up why he rated the colt so highly. Big Ranger has now won twelve of fourteen career starts and banked $756,892. Under Lorentzon, he’s kept right on winning, his Hambletonian elimination victory coming by four lengths in 1:50, form good enough to make him the clear favourite heading into Saturday’s final.

Lorentzon, for her part, has said the transition was seamless.

“It didn’t really surprise me because he’s been doing everything so handy since we got him,” Lorentzon said, in comments to Standardbred Canada.

That’s not much comfort to Gillespie, who built the foundation Lorentzon inherited. He has no ownership stake in Big Ranger, and with the horse now in someone else’s barn, there was never any prospect of him being at the Meadowlands regardless of how the campaign played out. Saturday will find him back at Scioto Downs, working a card at the half-mile oval where he’s spent most of his career, while the horse he raised to Horse of the Year status runs for $1 million two states away.

Scioto Downs is also where Gillespie passed his 1,000th career win last July, a milestone reached the hard way, meeting by meeting, on Ohio’s own state-bred tracks rather than the Grand Circuit stops where Big Ranger now competes. It’s the kind of career longtime horsemen build without much attention outside their own state, and it’s the same patient work that turned an unraced colt into the best three-year-old trotter Ohio has produced in years.

Whether Big Ranger wins Saturday or not, the record of how he got there won’t change. Gillespie found him, trained him, drove him to nine wins in his first eleven starts, and had no say in what came next. Lorentzon has kept him unbeaten since taking over and will have him in the gate as favourite for the sport’s biggest race. Gillespie will be watching from four hundred miles away, at a track where the purses are a fraction of the size, doing the same job he’s always done.

by Harnesslink Media