WAPAKONETA — Many of the harness racers at the Auglaize County Fair on Wednesday evening were second- and third-generation racers competing for actual purses and not just putting on a good show.
Roy Burns is a farmer from Milford Center. He’s been racing horses since 1976, when he was 16, and got into it because his family raised and raced horses when he was a child, he said. Harness racers go through the fair circuit during the season racing their 2- or 3-year-old horses.
“Breeding has picked up in the last few years because of the racinos,” Roy Burns said. Racinos are what they call race tracks with slot machines.
A percentage of those proceeds go to the purses for races. The racers take those purses and use the money to purchase new yearlings to raise and race as second years during the next year’s races.
“It’s helping the grassroots from the farmers to the truck dealers,” Roy Burns said pointing out all the expensive trucks and horse trailers parked near the barn and track.
Kacey Burns, 19, is Roy Burns’ daughter, continuing the generational racing tradition. Like her father before her, she was raised around horses and grew up wanting to race.
“I’ve always wanted to do it,” she said. “Ever since I was old enough to walk a horse. I actually started jobbing the horses sitting on my dad’s lap. I was too short to reach the stirrups.”
Prospective racers have to be 16 years old and have to take a written test. Then people in the business have to observe them driving and they then have to be signed off on by someone who is part of the business, Kacey Burns said.
Each race begins with the gate truck, a pickup modified so wings with red gating swing up and down to signal the beginning of a race, driving down the track and setting the pace for the racers and their horses.
Mike Woebkenberg is another third-generation racer. He now organizes races and drives the gate truck.
The pickup has been modified by Woebkenberg to allow him to control the gate and speed of the vehicle while the person behind the wheel only controls the the steering. Woebkenberg calls out to the racers from the microphone in the gate truck informing them the race is on, while raising the gate.
“When the gate goes up I’m in charge until it goes back down,” Woebkenberg said.
After the riders and horses are all against the gate he lowers the wings, hits the gas and the person behind the wheel pulls off onto the side of the track, out of the way, and the horses take off pulling their drivers along on one-person carts behind them.
“At the start of a race you get this rush,” Kacey Burns said. “You’re looking at the horse to your left and right. All of you are right there and all you can hear are the horses breathing and the hooves. Then the wings close and it’s a free-for-all.”
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