Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Tony Morgan On A Role

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Tony Morgan entered Tuesday with 715 wins this year. Only 16 times in harness racing history has a driver finished with more victories – and Morgan still has nearly four months to go. The top figure is 1,077 wins, set by Walter Case Jr. in 1998. The second-best mark is 852, which was established by Morgan in 1996.

"Some days, if I do really well, I think that if I have a few more like that it would be all right," said Morgan,who races primarily in Delaware. "That’s so far off, though, and it’s a big number. When you start averaging more than three or four wins a day, that’s tough to do. On a good day, I’ll think about it; on a bad day, it doesn’t enter my mind."

Morgan is averaging 2.89 wins per day, counting all calendar days and not just racing days. Case averaged 2.95 wins. At his current pace, Morgan would finish with 1,055 victories.

At the end of August, Morgan had 711 wins; Case ended August 1998 with 765 victories. Case’s best months were July and August; he won 105 races in both. His worst month was December, when he had 44 victories. Morgan’s best months so far have been April (102 wins) and August (101). His worst was July, with 58 victories.

Morgan started the year by winning 100 races in January, which put him 16 victories ahead of pace to start the campaign. He is winning at a 26-percent clip and has top victories in the $410,000 Woodrow Wilson with Fox Valley Barzgar and the $200,000 Dan Patch Invitational with Hop Sing. He has won 10,574 races in his career, good for fifth overall in harness history.

"I just wanted to have a good year, which I’ve been doing," said Morgan, who is a three-time winner of Harness Tracks of America’s Driver of the Year Award. "I was pretty confident I would have a good year, but didn’t know it would be anything like this. I haven’t had many bad days."