Last May, Alan and Jean Thayer of Hermon paid $32,500 for a 4-year-old pacer named Liscarton. Like everything else in harness racing, it was a gamble.

The gamble paid off on Jan. 26 when Liscarton won the Complex Series Final at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J., and a payoff of more than $96,000.

“You never know how good they’re going to be but he has a good blood line. Abercrombie, he’s been one of the dominant sires in the sport. He has a tendency to produce tough race horses that last,” Alan Thayer said.

Liscarton went off at 84-1 odds and was driven by George Brennan who has raced in Maine in the past. The horse is trained by the Thayer’s son, Shawn.

Due to a death in the family, the Thayers were unable to attend the race and watched it at Miller’s OTB in Bangor.

“Everybody down there kinda knows one another. I don’t go in a lot. Everybody in there knew it was our horse racing. We kinda took over the place for a few minutes. We had our own little cheering crowd,” the 54-year-old Thayer said.

He said to prove that the win was no fluke, Liscarton came back to win his next race.

Liscarton has also had wins at Plainridge Racecourse in Plainville, Mass.

“This is our biggest pay day by quite a bit. We’ve won some good races here in Maine over the years and at Yonkers in New York. But this was the biggest and hopefully not the last,” Thayer said.