SKOWHEGAN – The Skowhegan State Fair has been named a 2003 winner of the U.S. Trotting Association’s Blue Ribbon Fair Award for its harness racing program.

Skowhegan was one of three fair harness racing programs honored nationally. Also recognized were Humbold, Iowa, and Van Wert, Ohio.

Award winners are selected annually by the readers of “Hoof Beats” magazine and visitors to the USTA Web site.

The Skowhegan State Fair is marking its 185th anniversary, making it the oldest continuously operating agricultural fair in the United States. Formed by the Somerset Central Agricultural Society in 1918, the fair preceded the founding of the state of Maine by two years.

Early in the fair’s history, some of the country’s finest racehorses competed for purses ranging from $50 to $375. Ino, locally owned by Enoch Hight, was one of the best racehorses in the nation at the time he paced around the fair’s one-mile oval in 1877.

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, some of the top harness horses in the country called Skowhegan home, including Brewaway, who placed second in the 1949 Little Brown Jug, and Cynical Way, fifth in the 1950 Hambletonian.

This year for the first time, the Skowhegan is simulcasting its race cards for the full fair meet, which runs through Aug. 16. Racing starts at 2 p.m. each day.

The week of racing will be capped off by the Walter H. Hight Memorial Pace on Saturday with entries shooting for a purse of $5,000 – with a $4,000 bonus given if the track record is broken. Autobot, the second of two horses to break the track record at the Hight Pace, holds the current track pacing record of 1 minute, 55.2 seconds.

The Skowhegan trotting record is 2:00, set by Pine Magic in 2000.