Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Battle Begins for Year End Honors

December 1, 2005

A Three Horse Race!
Rocknroll Hanover, Peaceful Way and Mr Muscleman sit atop the final Hambletonian Society/Breeders Crown weekly poll. The three combined for 33 wins in 42 races this year and racked up $4.2 million in earnings. Just 11 points in the poll, which is made up of 35 voters, separate the three horses.

The exploits of Rocknroll Hanover, coming off a 1¼-length win in Saturday’s $555,000 Breeders Crown for three-year-old male pacers, will be fresh in the minds of the U.S. Harness Writers Association’s 270 voters. Rocknroll Hanover won 12 of 18 starts and earned $2.23 million, which trails only Gallo Blue Chip (2000) and Cam’s Card Shark (1994) for highest earnings in a season. Gallo Blue Chip and Cam’s Card Shark were voted Horse of the Year following those campaigns. He won the sport’s two million-dollar events for three-year-old pacers, the North America Cup and Meadowlands Pace, in addition to the Breeders Crown and the $500,000 New Jersey Classic in May. He also claimed divisions of the Simcoe, Bluegrass, Tattersalls and James Dancer. He was no worse than third in any race this season and finished his career with nearly $2.8 million, good for 11th place among all pacers in history.

Mr Muscleman, a five-year-old gelding, last raced on September 17 at Mohawk Racetrack, winning the $771,540 Maple Leaf Trot by 5½ lengths over Muscles Marinara in 1:52.1. He also won the $800,000 Breeders Crown Trot at Mohawk in September, setting the track record of 1:52 in the process. For the season, he had 12 wins in 14 starts and earned $1.36 million – the richest campaign for an older trotter since Moni Maker banked $1.49 million in 1999 and the seventh-best year for any trotter in history.

In June, Mr Muscleman became the first trotter in history to post three winning miles of 1:52 or better in the same month. He also set a record with five straight winning efforts in 1:52 or faster and holds the mark for most miles of 1:52 or quicker with six. Mr Muscleman also won the $254,800 Titan Cup, $250,000 Trotting Classic and the $180,000 Cutler Memorial. He was second by a neck in the $154,200 Su Mac Lad in April. He ranks 10th among all trotters in history with $3.25 million in purses.

Peaceful Way, a four-year-old, won nine of 10 races this year, including the $250,000 Breeders Crown for trotting mares and the $250,000 American-National, where she defeated her male counterparts. Her only misstep, literally and figuratively, came in the Maple Leaf Trot when she went off stride. She equaled the world record for female trotters of 1:51.4 in winning a leg of the Classic Oaks at the Meadowlands in July. She earned $660,804 in purses this season. In addition, Peaceful Way won the $292,208 Armbro Flight and the $81,500 Allerage at the Red Mile. The other owners are the Goin My Way Stable, Angie Stiller, Sam Goldband, Marvin Katz and Al Libfeld.