Pacers to vie for laurels at Skowhegan, Unity state fairs

Skowhegan Fair has two racing days left — tonight and Saturday. Tonight’s 11-race program features three divisions of Maine Standardbred Breeders Stakes 3-year-old colts and geldings, each division racing for a $5,371 purse. Post time is 7:30 p.m.

Skowhegan returns to afternoon racing on Saturday and its 11-race card features the $5,000 Walter H. Hight Memorial Pace, an annual event showcased on Skowhegan’s last day of racing. In addition to $5,000 purse for the race, Skowhegan Fair also offers an additional $5,000 if the track record is broken, according to Clayton Smith, director of racing. The current pacing mark at Skowhegan is 1:55.2, set by Autobot and George Brennan Jr. in 1992.

The five-horse pacing field and drivers for Saturday’s Hight, from the rail out, are: Cam Handsome Fella, Bob Sumner; Rhine Wine, Dave Ingraham; Casino Winner, Heath Campbell; Branchbrook Mystic, Kevin Switzer and Chatham Hoochee and Chris Long. Post time is 2 p.m.

Harness racing on Maine’s agricultural fair circuit moves to Union Fair on Sunday with afternoon races. Union Fair will continue its free admission policy to the daily harness races. Union’s free admission policy applies only to the harness racing and not the fair or midway. Racing passes will not be accepted at the front gate, but all race fans will be admitted free of charge at the regular racing gate off Route 17, according to Barry Norris, director of racing at Union Fair.

Ken Sumner returns again this year as Union’s race secretary. Steve Mancine steps into the presiding judge’s position, along with Frank Woodbury and Sheridan Smith as associate judges and Roger Smith Jr. lines up the horses for the word “go” as the race starter.

Union Fair has a number of special racing events planned, in conjunction with the 131st edition of Maine’s Annual Wild Blueberry Festival Fair, including a minature horse race on Friday at 2:30 p.m. Union will host all the 3-year-old divisions of the Maine Standardbred Breeders Stakes. The trotters are scheduled for Wednesday with the pacing fillies on Thursday and the pacing colts on Friday afternoon’s program.

Union officials will also award $500 each to the driver with the most wins and to the trainer with the most wins out of his stable at the week-long race meet. Post times at Union are: 2 p.m. Sunday; 3 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 p.m. on Saturday.

PACING BITS — A pair of veteran trainers were involved in a bad training accident at Scarborough Downs last Saturday which sent both of them to Maine Medical Center in Portland. Elmer Ballard and Cecil Blackwood were jogging and talking along side each other on the track when a loud noise jumped their horses. Blackwood fell out of his sulky onto the track and Ballard was unseated, but held onto his horse’s reins.

Ballard’s horse, Long Tall Curly, made a couple of circles, according to Blackwood, and hit him in the right ankle. The horse then took off down the track with Ballard hanging onto the reins, but he couldn’t hold the horse and was forced to let go. As Curly galloped off the track, he hit one of Alison MacDonald’s stable workers who was not seriously injured and received treatment for bruises at the track. Curly went back to his barn on his own.

When the two trainers were examined at the hospital, Blackwood had a broken right ankle and Ballard had all the ribs on his left side broken, a punctured lung, a concussion and cuts and contusions.

Laurie MacKenzie of Plymouth, Ballard’s daughter, said her father has been released from the hospital, as has Blackwood, but he is in a lot of pain and confined to bed in his Lebanon home. The MacKenzie’s son, Cain, is tending his grandfather’s stock. Blackwood is also sore and bruised and moving slowly.

On Sunday, in the third race at the Skowhegan Fair race track, Derryl “Dukey” Niles Jr. of Dexter was driving his 3-year-old Radiant Ruler colt, Matts Ruler, (a stakes colt) down the home stretch heading for the finish line. At the finish line, Niles said his sulky hit a steel pole and cartwheeled him out of his bike and onto the track.

Niles was taken to the Redington Fairview Hospital for examination and x-rays. His accident left him with bruises and contusions to his entire right side, but no broken bones. Doctors said he will be sidelined from three to 10 weeks. Except for one scratch, his horse came through the ordeal fine.

The Maine harness racing community was saddened this week by the death of Leroy `Mac’ MacDonald Jr. of Bangor. MacDonald, an owner, trainer and driver of harness horses (ALM and Flossie’s Boy M) on the Maine circuit for many years had Alzheimer’s Disease. Our condolences to his family.