Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Odds On Racing's Private Farrier: Chuck Bright
By Kimberly A. Rinker

Odds On Racing has one of the top farriers in the Standardbred business today. Chuck Bright, a name synonymous with harness racing in the Midwest, has been part of the Odds On team since the beginning of trainer Robin Schadt and owner Dana Parham's partnership.

Chuck, a 60-year-old Oregon, Illinois native, has for years been revered amongst trainers for his expertise as a blacksmith-perhaps one of the oldest trades known to man. He was born and raised around horses and began a career as a farrier when he was just 21-years-old. Chuck practiced his trade for 17 years out of his shop at the Elkhorn County Fair Grounds in Wisconsin, and then maintained clients at Maywood, Balmoral and the now-defunct Sportsman's Park for 21 years before joining the Odds On team.

Previously this journeyman farrier worked for a number of different Midwest trainers, including Roger Welch, Carl Porcelli, Glen Kidwell, Mike Arnold, Prairieland Farms, and the Joe Anderson Stable.

"I like trainers who know what they want," Chuck said. "Doers and decision makers. That makes it easy for me to do my job well."

"After shoeing horses for 30 years it is nice to shoe for a big stable," Chuck said. "It's an opportunity to shoe some really well-bred horses, and in a lot of cases the well-bred horses are just easier to shoe. Their breeding comes through."

Chuck added that because the Standardbred race horse has become more refined in recent years, in regards to breeding, they often need less corrective shoeing.

"Most of the time a horse will just tell the trainer what he needs in terms of shoes," Chuck said. "The trainer has to be a good listener. She or he has to see what the horse is telling them by the way the horse's feet hit the ground, and by the way they wear their shoes. Horses are bred so much better nowadays that they need less corrective shoeing anyway."

Common problems with harness horses like cross-firing in pacers and scalping in trotters are usually do to defects with confirmation, Chuck said.

"Horses that cross fire and hit their knees are usually horses with confirmation defects," Chuck said. "Knee knockers you really can't stop, but you can shoe them to make them hit their knees either less or less hard. Cross-firing horses you can do a lot with, by just changing shoe types and adding some borium here and there."

Ever indefatigable, Chuck says he's learned a lot from some trainers over the years.

"I used to shoe for Ray Tripp," Chuck said. "He was a big trainer at the time, being at Elkhorn in the summers and Ben White Raceway in the winters. He used to make his appointments three weeks in advance, and that made all the other trainers mad, because they'd always come to me at the last minute and want something shod."

"But Ray had a great saying," Chuck added. "He always said that 'It ain't what you spend, it's what you make that really counts.' I've always remembered that, and tried to work with that same attitude."

Chuck once used an idea that he had gotten from the immortal Harry Burright, to correct a horse for trainer Roy Saul.

"The horse was Daddy O Doll and she just wouldn't go a real fast training mile," Chuck said. "She was hitting her knees while wearing a full swedge shoe. So we put a flat shoe on her with borium on the whole outside of the shoe, just as Harry had done with a horse he had named Jerry's Sunshine. I don't know why that shoe works, but it cleans up a lot of knee knockers."

Chuck also had the distinction of shoeing three consecutive Pete Langely winners. Garfunkle was one of them.

"Garfunkle was making breaks left and right in 1996 three weeks before the race," Chuck remembered. "I got him to shoe and he was extremely over-gaited in the hind-end, he was just too pacey, and was too rolly behind. So I put a shoe on him that made him travel more narrow behind, and consequently, he was straighter going all the way around."

Chuck also shod Illinois champion Big Tom, who scored an impressive 1:49 victory at Balmoral, the first Illinois-bred to break the 1:50 barrier in the late 1990's.

Nowadays however, you can find Chuck Bright shoeing exclusively for the Odds On Racing team at his private shop at Odds On Acres in Crete, Illinois. According to Chuck, "there's a lot of satisfaction that comes with knowing you were part of a team that helps to produce a winning stable."