Longtime professionals make sure horses can do their best

DELAWARE — Mike Woebkenberg faces backward in the rear seat of his custom-made Ford F-150 pickup, his eyes set on eight, 2-year-old colts pulling colorfully dressed drivers.

The animals are snorting and focused on the extended arms of the gate truck, whose speed and braking Woebkenberg controls with a joy-stick-like device in a console. A driver upfront does nothing but steer.

“The start is the most exciting part of the race,” he said. “Because just before I pop those wings, those drivers, their minds are just racing ... as to what they’re going to do and all their last-minute strategies.

“At the start, everybody’s involved. Everybody’s right there.”

Unlike thoroughbred racing gates, which are fixed, harness racing gates lead the horses and sulky drivers to a point on the track where they get a running start. Then the gates withdraw at a precise mark.

The 72nd running of the Little Brown Jug drew fans from all over the world to the Delaware County Fairgrounds on Thursday. And though a dusty, 90-degree day might have melted the will of some, a select few who got to ride the quarter-mile inside the gate truck, next to Woebkenberg, say it’s a day they’ll never forget.

As she stepped out of the rear seat, Gina Englehart of Dublin lifted up her sunglasses and surprised herself.

“I’m crying,” she said. “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I have never seen so much power and energy,” she said of the horses she led, if only for about 30 seconds.

“They’re beautiful, and they know when it’s time to go. You see it in their eyes.”

“You can hear them breathe and smell them,” said her friend, Deb Joseph, who also got the experience.

For Woebkenberg, who has operated the starting gates more than 4,000 times, it doesn’t get old.

“You’ve got 30 seconds in order to meld eight different horses’ personalities and driver personalities, each wanting to do it their own way, into a fair and equal start for everybody.”

Fairness also is an obsession for Gregory Coon.

Coon is track consultant for the races, managing a small crew whose tractors drag chain-link fencing and other equipment around the halfmile loop.

If strafing the track is the brawn of the job, Coon’s mastery of clay and sand is the brains. The correct chemistry produces just the right feel for the 3-year-old trotters, allowing the horses to make their fastest, fairest and safest possible races.

“When the cushion is perfect, it sounds like the horse is training over your living room carpet,” Coon said.

The horses like the feel of clay, which tends to make them go faster, he said.

The idea is to eliminate the “sting” in a horse’s hooves, Coon said. “The clay, a vestige of the old days, gives bounce that the new tracks with stone on them don’t provide.

“My job is to keep the horsemen happy and keep the horses sound,” he said.

Without Coon’s track mastery, moisture from rain and even fog could end a race, said Tom Wright, director of racing and president of the Little Brown Jug Society.

“He’s a behind-thescenes-guy and he likes it that way,” Wright said. “If you don’t hear nor see of him, it’s a great thing. Everything’s under control.”