The road to the Hambletonian sometimes requires a crazy route. But it’s a safe bet Hall of Fame driver Trevor Ritchie is the only person that got there after quitting over the very same race – dispelling the old adage that quitters never prosper.
Tuesday, Aug. 5 will mark exactly 25 years since Ritchie drove Yankee Paco to victory in the 2000 Hambletonian at The Meadowlands (
right, Dave Landry photo) and provided a landmark victory for the Ontario horse racing industry.
Yankee Paco, trained by Doug McIntosh and owned by Americans Harry Ivey and his son, Dr. Tom Ivey, was the first Ontario-sired winner of the Hambletonian, trotting’s equivalent of the Kentucky Derby.
But Ritchie’s journey to Hambletonian immortality actually began 26 years earlier when Hall of Fame trainer, owner and breeder Bill Herbert sent homebred filly Sing Away Herbert some 1,200 kilometers from Greenwood Raceway in Toronto to Du Quoin, IL to contest the 1974 Hambletonian won by Christopher T.
Ritchie was Sing Away Herbert’s caretaker.
“I was never so heartbroken in my life when I loaded her on the trailer at Greenwood Raceway to head to the Hambletonian and I didn't get to go with her,” Ritchie said. “It was just devastating to me.
“I actually made a pact with myself that day. Bill Herbert named a horse after me, Trevor Herbert, and he was a 3-year-trotting colt. He was okay, but he wasn't great. And I said to myself, ‘As soon as he wins a race, I want to get my picture taken with him and I'm going to quit right after that.’ And I did. He finally won a race at Flamboro… and I gave Bill my notice that night that I was all done. So, I stuck to my word.”
More than 50 years later, Ritchie said not getting to go to the Hambletonian with Sing Away Herbert wasn’t just
one reason he quit, “it was the only reason,” he said.
He still has the photo of himself with Trevor Herbert in the winner’s circle.
“Looking back on it, Jack Herbert went [to the Hambletonian with Sing Away Herbert] and if they had sent me they were going to be really short of help [at Greenwood]. So, I understand that part of it, but still, at the time, I was just devastated. I made a pact with myself that day when I was loading her and realized that I wasn’t going. I said, ‘As soon as Trevor Herbert wins a race, I’m out of here.’”
Three years after quitting, Ritchie began a stellar driving career that saw him win most of the sport’s biggest races, collect purse earnings exceeding $70 million and land a berth in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.
But winning the Hambletonian with Yankee Paco remains a career highlight.
“It was a dream that you dream about when you're a kid, but you know that it's never going to happen,” Ritchie said. “And then when it does happen… I'm not a crier in the first place over almost anything, and I had a tear in my eye when I was pulling that horse up. Now, that tear was long gone by the time I got back to the winner's circle. But when I was pulling up, I literally had a tear in my eye. And I said, ‘Man, oh, man. I just won the Hambletonian.’”
But even the route to the winner’s circle was anything but ordinary. Ritchie said Yankee Paco was terrible in his elimination the week before, despite winning it.
“If it had not been a Hambletonian elim, I would have said to Doug, ‘You’ve got to scratch this horse. He's no good.’ I couldn't hardly get him to trot… I don’t know if he trotted for an eighth of a mile in the post parade.
“I don’t know what Doug did [between the elim and the final] but he really performed a miracle. The next week [Yankee Paco] was much better.”
Still, the winning trip on that hot New Jersey August day was anything but easy. Yankee Paco was parked every step of the way.
“I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I'm going to,” Ritchie said. “I think I drove the way I had to drive that horse to win that race that day.
“Going around the first turn, I was just starting to tuck into the hole, and there were about four horses that still hadn't cleared or found a spot… At The Meadowlands, when you get down the backstretch, everybody is protecting their position. They're all half in, half out, and you're not going anywhere. Paco wasn't a real sprinter, so I said, ‘If that happens like I think, my chances are not very good. The hell with it, I'm going to move back out. I'm going to get into the flow before we get off the turn. Somebody's going to get parked other than me, and even though I'm going to be two wide, I'm going to have their cover.’
“So that was what went through my mind when I moved… back out around the first turn. As it turns out, Plan A didn't work because the last horse to clear was my cover… I thought, ‘Holy s - - -. There goes my great idea.’ But I thought, ‘I'm just going to take a nice hold of Paco and just ride it out here and wait until I'm forced to press’ and that's what I did. And when somebody tipped off my back fanning off the turn, I said, ‘Okay, let's go.’ And away we went. And what it ended up being was something else.”
But Ritchie dispels the oft-repeated suggestion that he drove that day as if he had ice in his veins.
“I'm not going to pretend I was this cool, calm guy going through the lane, because I wasn't,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Please, please come to the wire really quickly,’ and ‘I can't believe that nobody's going by me’ and all these thoughts. I was just holding my breath. The nerves were there.”
Yankee Paco, a son of Balanced Image out of Yankee Playgirl, defeated Credit Winner by ¾ of a length in a season’s best 1:53.2.
Watch the replay here.
Ritchie had won America’s biggest trotting race in his very first attempt.
“If you look back at my record, I was really good at first times and not as good the second time,” Ritchie said. “The first time I was in the Meadowlands Pace, I won it with Frugal Gourmet. The first time I was in the World Trotting Derby, I won it with Andover Hall. I think the first time I was in the North America Cup I won it with Quite A Sensation.”
But winning the Hambletonian put him on another level.
“I think [winning the Hambletonian] boosted my career considerably,” Ritchie said. “I think people say, ‘If somebody can handle the pressure of the Hambletonian and win it, I'm game enough to put them down on other horses.’”
As for Yankee Paco, on Aug. 6 – one day after the 25
th anniversary of his greatest, but far from only great triumph – he will officially be inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.
“I was tickled,” Ritchie said of hearing the news that Yankee Paco was going to the Hall of Fame. “I’ve been trying for a few years. I’ve been nominating him and writing letters… He was the first Canadian-sired horse
ever to win the Hambletonian. He was on the front page of
The Toronto Star. That tells you something. And it wasn’t just the Hambo. He won other stakes races, including the Canadian Trotting Classic and the American-National in Chicago. I thought he was deserving on more than just one race, but, obviously, I am tickled he is going to be inducted.”
This Saturday (Aug. 2), the Hambletonian will celebrate its 100th edition a quarter century after Yankee Paco put the Ontario harness racing industry on the sport’s equivalent of the moon.
Twenty-five years on, the moment isn’t lost on Ritchie.
“I dreamt about just being in [the Hambletonian] as a groom,” he said. “That was going to be the pinnacle. Then I ended up getting to drive a horse that won the race.”
As he turned Yankee Paco toward the winner’s circle, Trevor Ritchie remembers one overriding thought: “Holy Jesus, I just won the Hambletonian.”
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