WEST MEAD TOWNSHIP — Harness racing, part of the Crawford County Fair since the fair’s first year in 1946, returned to the track Wednesday as hundreds gathered in the grandstand to study their racing form, pick their favorites and perhaps make a friendly wager with a friend or grandchild.

One of numerous free events at the fair, the races attracted all kinds — a troop of youngsters on a camp visit to the fair, serious handicappers poring over their programs and everything in between.

In the cheap seats

“I usually have quarter bets with all the grandkids,” said Chuck Groger of Harmonsburg after the first race. Halfway up the grandstand, Groger sat eyeing his program with Emily Groger of Guys Mills, one of his nine grandchildren. “When all the grandkids are here, I get the last pick — whatever’s left.”

But two quarters had been exchanged yet, Groger explained, since it was just the two of them. Emily’s two brothers — the three of them are triplets — had returned to the pig barn where two older sisters were preparing to show their pigs. Chuck and Emily, in the meantime, were continuing a family tradition at the harness races, like many in the crowd.

“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, coming with my dad and uncles,” Chuck said. “I’ve probably been doing it 55 years.”

Chuck had Emily beat, of course, but Wednesday was already the 4-year-old’s fourth year at the races, Chuck said. Emily, for her part, remained shy and mostly silent beside her “Papa,” looking skeptically over her sunglasses as she declined to share any of the considerations the two took into account as they picked their winners.

The sport, which features Standardbred horses pulling their drivers behind them in sulkies, two-wheeled carts, can get in your blood, many of those in the crowd attested.

The view from above

Directly above the Grogers, a blood test might have found harness racing in Roger Huston’s blood after about 35 years of calling the action on the track at the Crawford County Fair. Huston was stationed in the chain-link skybox suspended from the roof of the grandstand along with other race officials.

Between the third race and the fourth race, the mood in the caged perch high above the track resembled the same relaxed atmosphere as was evident around the Grogers 30 feet below. Squeezed around a long table, officials checked the times from the previous race and questioned who needed to send what where. Despite the calm, it had already been a big day.

“We had a track record,” Huston said. “Todd Schadel on Bela’s Bad Boy ran 2:06 in the 2-year-old colt and gelding trotters. He broke a mark that was established in 2014.”

With 27 races this year, more than in the recent past, according to Huston, more records could fall.

On the track below, a few drivers jogged their horses around the track in preparation for later races. Huston's voice seemed to shift from black-and-white to color as he picked up the microphone to call the next round of racers to the track.

Moments later the same Oz-like transformation seemed to ripple through the entire booth as Huston turned toward the track. The next race was ready and the pace car circled the track with the horses trotting behind.

Stepping toward the edge of the booth, Huston put the microphone to his lips. “Heeeeeere they come!” he told the crowd.

Turning back to the others in the booth, he lowered the mic and told them, “We will pause for this important message.”

And then they were off, the half-dozen horses on the track pulling their drivers behind them in the two-wheeled carts.

Presiding Judge Doug Thomas, who officiates races at many of the fairs throughout the commonwealth, explained some of the fundamentals for the unfamiliar observer as Huston remained locked in concentration during the race. Besides the drivers being pulled behind, the other most significant difference between harness racing and the more familiar Thoroughbred horse racing, is the gait. Where Thoroughbreds gallop around the track, Standardbreds maintain a steady trot around the track and must move to the outside and reestablish their trot if they break stride, Thomas said.

As though on cue, below him on the track a horse led coming around the final turn in the two-lap race. With nothing on the horizon between the horse and the finish line, it suddenly drifted to the outside.

“He was home free and he broke stride,” Thomas said.

Like human athletes, it seemed, equine athletes can sometimes be plagued by mental errors. Immediately, the second-place horse surged past for the finish line.

The shocking change of fortune had not escaped Huston, of course, whose intensity approached a boil: “Going to the three-quarter mark — three-quarters in 1:35. Into the final turn What a Hunk with the lead, Willie B. Worthy is second, third American Brexit. … Off stride! Willie B Worthy — into the stretch they come and Willie B Worthy now has the lead. Down the the stretch by three lengths, pulling away from What a Hunk. It’s Willie B Worthy, opening up now with every stride — Willie B Worthyyyy!”

After the race

Like any athletes, Willie B Worthy and the other racing horses followed a particular post-race routine. After a couple of cool-down laps, drivers led their horses back to the barn, where they received baths before returning to fresh hay in their stalls.

“They know when it’s race day,” said driver Wayne Long, who had traveled from Delaware to race at the fair. Placing a blanket over a horse who was waiting to be called to the track, Long had already won two of the four races he had participated in by mid-afternoon. “It’s exciting — like any kind of sporting event.”

The secret to winning, he said, is all in the horse.

“It doesn’t matter who’s driving or what you do,” he said. “The main thing is the horse.”

Still in his racing silks, Ernie Masci offered a similar assessment as he stood nearby outside the barn.

“They get nervous, some of them,” he said of the horses, “and they’re very competitive — well, not all of them. They’re like people.”

But on the track, he said, the excitement tends to take over.

“When you’re out there,” Masci said, looking toward the track, “it’s a thrill.”

Mike Crowley can be reached at 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.

You can go

Harness racing continues with 13 races today beginning at 11 a.m. at the race track. Admission to the grandstand to view the races is free.

By Mike Crowley Meadville Tribune

Reprinted with permission of The Meadville Tribune