ALSO TO BE HONORED ARE MICHELLE CRAWFORD
(GOOD “GUY”),
RAY COTOLO (BREAKTHROUGH) AND CHRIS GOODEN
(UNSUNG HERO)
HARRISBURG PA – Aaron Merriman, the first driver to win over 1000
races in two consecutive years and set to post the second-highest one-season
victory total in North American history, has been selected as Driver of the
Year in a vote among members of the United States Harness Writers Association
(USHWA), harness racing’s leading media group.
Merriman is only 40 years old, but he is already a “veteran” of
20+ years of the sulky wars, learning from his father Lanny, mostly at
Northfield Park near Cleveland. He had 182 winners in 2000, his first year of
full-time exposure, but he has been gaining with every step, with 10,857
victories in the 21st century and 6926 visits to Victory Lane
in the first nine years of the this decade.
Merriman will post the second-highest win total for a driver in
harness racing history, behind only Tim Tetrick’s standard of 1189 in
2007; Aaron was at 1118 after Wednesday’s racing. This total eclipses his
personal best of 1093, taken last year, and this year he has reached another
important milestone with his mounts earning over $10.3 million – his first
eight-figure season.
And the level of competition Aaron faces at the main terminals of
his endless miles on the road is very high – at Northfield, he consistently
races against Ron Wrenn Jr., who was the last person to dethrone him for the
national title (2014, by a 847-841 count), and at The Meadows near Pittsburgh
he competes against Dave Palone, the winningest driver of all-time (18,640 and
counting), and the leading pilot at The Meadows since shortly after
high-wheeled sulkies went out of fashion, so it seems.
Michelle Crawford may not keep quite as unremitting a schedule as
Merriman, but she comes very close. An unbridled enthusiastic voice for harness
racing, Michelle is foremost the co-operator with her husband Al of Crawford
Farms, a midstate New York breeding facility, and his racing component Crawford
Farms Racing, always looking to acquire the next big star and improve the
overall quality of horses associated with Crawford. One giant step towards that
goal in 2018 found Michelle in the winners circle of the sport’s biggest race,
the Hambletonian, as a partner on the filly Atlanta, who upended the boys in
the classic race for three-year-old trotters and then went on to a
million-dollar season, and now looms as potentially a great broodmare. Crawford
Racing also is co-owner of Homicide Hunter, whose 1:48.4 mile at Lexington
earned him “World’s Fastest Trotter” honors.
Michelle is aware of the “bigger picture” in harness racing,
reflected in her serving as vice-president of the Harness Horse Breeders of New
York, and especially as a board member of the newly-formed Standardbred
Transition Alliance, where she will undoubtedly put into practice on a
continental level the well-established programs to take care of former racing
and breeding stock that she has established at Crawford. Her knowledge and
enthusiasm make her one of the more positive forces – a real Good “Guy” -- for
the sport.
Two other USHWA honorees serve the sport on a communications
level, with one of them involved in the chronicling of the sport half his life
– and he’s only 19! Ray Cotolo, winner of the Breakthrough Award as an
up-and-comer on the non-training-driving side, started accompanying his
journalist father Frank to the major races, and swiftly picked up the necessary
knowledge to combine with his natural communications skills to become a source
of knowledge for the industry and fans in several areas: a podcast called North
American Harness Update, a pioneer (2012) project which went “on the road” for
the first time in 2018; freelance work, mainly writing, for such important
entities as the Hambletonian Society, The Meadowlands, Standardbred Canada, the
Woodbine Entertainment Group, and the Red Mile; and as a budding announcer.
And Ray is doing all this while enrolled at Elizabethtown (PA)
College, as a communications major benefitting from the Harold Snyder Memorial
Scholarship Fund of the late on-track television pioneer.
Chris Gooden works as the photographer for the racing at The
Meadows racetrack, in addition to “regular” jobs his business picks up in his
southwestern Pennsylvania area. But what is “Unsung” – and remarkable – about
Gooden is the amount of work he does gratis, of his own volition, to
keep The Meadows at the forefront of the new forms of “social” communications
media (and beyond).
Facebook coverage of live racing? Check. Including
“live-from-the-bike” camera photography? Double check. Keeping up a high
profile on Twitter? Check. And there’s one above and beyond the call of duty.
When illness hampered a local horseman’s finances a few months ago, Gooden
posted a Facebook notice that he was selling a special photo of Foiled Again –
the Bergstein/Proximity winner, and based at Gooden’s “home track” of The
Meadows – and would donate the money minus shipping to the beleaguered family.
And over $1500 has been raised so far. No fanfare, just results -- that’s why
Chris Gooden is an Unsung Hero.
Merriman, Crawford, Cotolo, and Gooden will be honored at USHWA’s
annual Dan Patch Awards Banquet, celebrating the best and brightest of harness
racing in the past year. The banquet honoring the champions of 2018 will be
held on Sunday, February 24, 2019 at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando
FL, the climax of a weekend that also finds USHWA holding its annual national
meetings.
Reservations for those attending can be made through USHWA’s
website, www.ushwa.org; a link to the
hotel’s computer is on the front page of the website. Those who would like to
take out congratulatory ads for awardwinners in the always-popular Dan Patch
Awards Journal can do so by contacting Kim Rinker at trotrink@aol.com (the 2018 journal is online
at the writers’ website). Information about purchasing tickets for the dinner
will become available and will be posted shortly.
