Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Odds On Racing's

Trainer of the Month
for November 2011

Mark Harder

When Mark Harder was growing up in Johnsonville, New Zealand, his parents thought he would attend college, study agriculture and ultimately run the family farm.

Luckily for him, he had other ideas.

Mark Harder

Today, Harder has established himself as one of harness racing's premier trainers in North America. His parents, Larraine and Graerne, grow kiwi and avocados at their Down Under farm. To think they once worried about how their son would survive financially when he quit college after two years.

"I don't think they wanted me to do horses," Harder says. "In the horse business, you start off at the bottom, and there's not a lot of money in it. It's a hard thing to break into, that's for sure."

As much as Harder tried to focus on classes at Canterbury University, his mind wandered.

"The horses," he says. "I had the bug by then."

Harder apprenticed with some of New Zealand’s top horsemen, and in the late 1980s was asked to travel to Chicago with a group of horses to be sold. Harder traveled back and forth to the U.S. on a regular basis for several years before giving Los Alamitos a try. Then, upon the recommendation of Ross Croghan, whom he knew in California, he went to work for Bob Murphy’s large standardbred contingent in British Columbia for three years.

"Some people I know back home were importing New Zealand racehorses to the states and asked me to do it for them," he says.

Problems with his work visa forced Harder to return to the U.S. and he went to work for Croghan’s powerful New Jersey stable. Harder went out on his own in 2000 and his stable quickly swelled. He won his first Meadowlands training title in 2004 and captured the Meadowlands Pace that year with Holborn Hanover, the longest priced winner in Pace history. Harder’s biggest win of the 2006 meet was the Governor’s Cup with Sutter Hanover.

                                               Holburn Hanover in action

"Racing him (Holburn Hanover) up to the Meadowlands Pace, I thought he was a horse who had a lot of ability and wasn't showing it," he says.

"With the owners I got involved with, a lot of things are going really well for me," he says. "It's so difficult these days to have a horse completely healthy. There's a lot of luck involved as much as management. They have to be right on that particular day."

Although he decided to scale back his stable a few years ago, Harder has reemerged as a strong nightly presence at the Meadowlands in 2009. Harder, 47, won his first Meadowlands training title in 2004, and his stable won 281 races and earned almost $7 million that year, but the New Zealand native became overwhelmed with managing a large-scale training operation and decided to scale things back.

"After I was leading trainer in 2004, the numbers got a bit big for me," Harder said. "I probably didn't handle it the way I wanted to, and it's just not my thing. I got big quick, and my kudos go out to guys like Erv Miller who run massive stables."

Mark Harder Career Statistics Through November 1, 2011
Year Starts/Wins/2nds/3rds   Earnings        UTRS
2011   493      90     70     64       $2,101,258      0.305
2010   626      113   100     79       $2,785,031      0.311
2009 576      117    85       79       $2,417,653      0.331
2008 448      67      66      57       $1,680,406     0.274
2007   403      50      52      62     $1,456,740      0.247
2006   629      80      83      82       $1,503,104      0.244
2005 1330 183   178      154      $3,949,071      0.251
2004   1538   281   202      186      $6,855,875      0.296
2003   1199 159   168      158      $2,658,872      0.254
2002 1165 188   155      147      $2,812,906      0.277
2001 595      84      95      54       $2,291,915      0.260
2000   14        4        2        1       $125,130        0.389
1996    7         0        0       2        $1,301            0.095
1992     1        0        1        0       $1,150           0.556
1991    49       2       5         5       $18,947           0.132
Total          1,418                        $30,659,359