Breeders Crown Time

It is BC week here in harness-land. We'll be handicapping all the races here, so feel free to contribute your thoughts, but first a look at some history.

ESPN covered this series for several years. In one of the earliest tilts we had the "Super Horse" Nihilator featured, who demolished a Woodrow Wilson field of freshman pacers off cover, with a brush rarely seen in racing just a month or so before the BC. It was a World Record that would stand for some time.

That year the late season honours seemed like a formality. I remember as a kid thinking it would be a walk in the park for the son of Niatross. He had a solid trainer, the best driver and was destined to march into the record books, perhaps this time setting a world record on a five-eighths mile track too.

But a funny thing happened. In the elimination, a colt by the name of Dragon's Lair, trained and driven by a not-so-well known Pennsylvanian horseman came to play and gave the big horse all he could handle, succumbing late. But the marbles were raced for an hour later in the Final, and everyone knew that it would be a tight one, because this shadow-rolled black colt had some go.

This race struck me as the race that the Breeders Crown became a force in harness racing. So we will relive it here, and hope to see more races like this come Saturday.