Looking for Harness-Racing COTH People

[STB_Tissa]

Maybedog you can sign up, free, for a virtual stable here to follow any horses of racing age.
http://www.trackmaster.com/products/harness/virtual_stable
You could also use the search option on the entries/results tab to find info about a specific horse.

As long as you know the registered name of a horse you can look them up on the USTA tattoo search. Even if their name was changed, you can still find them if you choose the current and prior name option. That won’t give you their full pedigree but it’s a start and many standardbreds are on all breeds.

When I’m looking for a pedigree, searching for the dam or second dam to try to find a sales page is helpful, and just about any stallion standing to the public will have a page with his pedigree and other info if the farm he’s standing at has a website. Many stallions are listed in the Stallion Showcase on USTA, which has the stallion’s pedigree and a lot of other info including breeding activity summary.

[maybedog]

[QUOTE=STB Tissa;8285493]
Maybedog you can sign up, free, for a virtual stable here to follow any horses of racing age.
http://www.trackmaster.com/products/harness/virtual_stable
You could also use the search option on the entries/results tab to find info about a specific horse.[/QUOTE]

Thank You STB Tissa!! I will do that. We get a lot of high risk mares and have delivered a few foals that even the vets were surprised we were able to save. Those are the ones we like to follow.

[wildernessD]

[QUOTE=maybedog;8285152]
I would say 90% of the mares we foal out are Standardbred. What I find frustrating is unless you have a paid account with the USTA there is no way to search pedigrees or race records. We always have a handful of foals that we would love to follow but without something like Equibase or Pedigree Query it’s next to impossible.[/QUOTE]

There is a FREE search at the USTA, however it is limited info (you do need an accurate name or tattoo/freezebrand #).
I’ve built a few pedigree’s using this FREE tool:
https://pathway.ustrotting.com/search/index.cfm?

[maybedog]

[QUOTE=wildernessD;8285949]
There is a FREE search at the USTA, however it is limited info (you do need an accurate name or tattoo/freezebrand #).
I’ve built a few pedigree’s using this FREE tool:
https://pathway.ustrotting.com/search/index.cfm?[/QUOTE]

Thanks wildernessD!! Found most of them on that sight!!

[Matador]

[QUOTE=wildernessD;8240574]
Ohio offers the largest harness racing fair program in the US.
Nearly all the Ohio Fairs offer pari-mutuel wagering (unique to Ohio).

Harness Racing at local fairs (and fairgrounds has been rapidly disappearing for decades. The amount of property (and expenses) required to accommodate harness racing balanced against the empty seats in the large grandstands (due to declining lack of interest in rural-amercia-agriculture) is easily discarded due to budget constraints.
My home state (Mich) is one example. A decade ago Mich had more than 30-fairs with harness racing. During 2014 there were just 13.

Harness Racing at the fairs (absent pari-mutuel-wagering) offers the general public nearly full access to the barns, horses and horsemen. The result is a mingling of the people that newcomers genuinely enjoy (as do the horsemen).
Children are especially welcomed, and their presence is one of the primary reason for the existence of the fairs.[/QUOTE]

I have such fond childhood memories of OH fair harness racing! Thanks for the reminder.

[wildernessD]

[QUOTE=Matador;8286314]
I have such fond childhood memories of OH fair harness racing! Thanks for the reminder.[/QUOTE]

Are you aware of the former track near the infamous ‘Indian Mounds’?

[Rackonteur]

I came back to this thread because I have been reading Red Horse Hill and Cedar’s Boy this Christmas, and also The Blood Bay Colt. I enjoyed the posts here about racing at county fairs, and tonight I’ve been watching some county fair races on YouTube. So cool!

I saw a copy of Born To Trot once at a bookstore. The horse on the cover was a pacer! It was not the original hardback edition, but a paperback edition illustrated by someone who obviously didn’t know a pace from a trot!

The library copy I have right now of The Blood Bay Colt shows the colt with his dam, a grey Arabian (and in the book his mom is a dark bay Standardbred). I’m really enjoying re-reading these old racing stories.

I’ve also been looking at Standardbred pedigrees on http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/

[Matador]

[QUOTE=Rackonteur;8992562]
I came back to this thread because I have been reading Red Horse Hill and Cedar’s Boy this Christmas, and also The Blood Bay Colt. I enjoyed the posts here about racing at county fairs, and tonight I’ve been watching some county fair races on YouTube. So cool!

I saw a copy of Born To Trot once at a bookstore. The horse on the cover was a pacer! It was not the original hardback edition, but a paperback edition illustrated by someone who obviously didn’t know a pace from a trot!

The library copy I have right now of The Blood Bay Colt shows the colt with his dam, a grey Arabian (and in the book his mom is a dark bay Standardbred). I’m really enjoying re-reading these old racing stories.

I’ve also been looking at Standardbred pedigrees on http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/[/QUOTE]

Cool, thanks. Where’d you find Red Horse Hill and Cedar’s Boy? I just looked them up and they seem $$$.

[Rackonteur]

I’m sending you a PM, Matador.

[Rackonteur]

Any Standardbred pedigree people here?

I was just looking up some pedigrees of some of the horses mentioned in Walter Farley’s harness racing books. He mentions some real horses as sires and dams of his fictional ones.

This is weird – in the books, Bonfire’s dam is Volo Queen, by Victor Volo and out of Hylo by Hollyrood Bob. I knew that Victor Volo and Hollyrood Bob were real horses, but I thought Volo Queen was fictional. But she has a pedigree online at http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/volo+queen !

I know you used to be able to enter hypothetical matings there, and fill in or correct entries in posted pedigrees. But it weirded me out to find the pedigree of a horse I’d thought was fictitious!

Do any of you know if the Volo Queen in Farley’s books was a real-life horse? Or maybe someone posted a fictitious pedigree online. I couldn’t find Volo Queen on any other Standardbred website, or Hylo; but I don’t have access to the subscription pedigrees.

This is just weird! (BTW, Bonfire is not listed on allbreedpedigree.com, at least not as a Standardbred by The Black and out of Volo Queen.)

[Matador]

[QUOTE=Rackonteur;8993130]
I’m sending you a PM, Matador. :)[/QUOTE]

Thanks, and Happy New Year! :winkgrin:

[sk_pacer]

Cruickston Volo Queen was a real horse but not the breeding listed and I no longer have access to the North American pedigree data base…costs too much. The other Volo Queen may well have existed, but without access to the full data base, I cannot confirm that. There is one filly listed under progeny; also note there is no year of birth for Volo Queen or Hy Lo so I am kinda suspicious.

All breed pedigree is sometimes kind of dicey with the entries and I did fix a couple of them myself using the Standardbred data base.

[Big_Tag]

It wouldn’t surprise me at all there would be a “real” Volo Queen. “Volo” was a pretty common word to find in STB pedigrees back in the day. A stallion named Volomite is credited as one of the prominent sire lines on the trotting side, and large number of his ancestors would have had Volo in their name. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mr. Farley would have been acquainted with the Volo name and made a fictitious dam for Bonfire out of it, and that it was coincidentally a real mare.

This is kind of a nice little page I found just now trying to find out when exactly Volomite was foaled (1926, in case anyone was wondering):
http://theblackbook.com/buyers-breedinfo.php?pid=sig