Willie was an inexpensive gelding from Ohio, with an equally obscure pedigree, and bad knees to boot. His owners tithed 10% of his winnings to their church, and rubbed his tender legs with homemade liniment. Miraculously his lameness disappeared, and he became known as "The Horse That God Loved". Later that summer he broke the track record at Brandywine with a time of 1:54 3/5 for the mile.

 

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The early '80's saw some hard times for harness racing. Competition from lotteries, casinos, cable TV, and home videos began to tell, as attendance and betting handles steadily declined. For years horse racing had little need for promotion or marketing, but suddenly they were faced with a generation that cared very little about horses, a generation that had found other avenues of entertainment and recreation.

 

Despite efforts to modernize and attract a new audience, major tracks around the country began to close their doors to harness racing: Hollywood Park in California, Wolverine Raceway in Detroit, Foxboro in Boston.... In 1985 Liberty Bell Park in Philadelphia went out business and became a shopping mall.    

 

Then in 1989, the unthinkable happened. Roosevelt Raceway in New York, the birthplace of modern harness racing, home of the first mobile starting gate and racing under the lights, closed due to dwindling business. In the 1960's Roosevelt averaged over 20,000 fans a night, but by 1988 they were averaging barely 4,000. Some of the decline was due to competition from The Meadowlands across the river, and from off-track betting parlors, but the handwriting was on the wall and a transfusion was needed.