These dozen records will be tough to break
by Bob Heyden
1. Jimmy Takter’s 22 Breeders Crown wins after going into the Hall Of Fame.
2. Redskin’s $1,407,263 2-year-old single-season earnings record (set in 1986)
3. Miss Easy’s Meadowlands record versus her own kind. She was 19-for-19 against females. Her two losses at the Big M came in a baby race to Arties Dream and when she broke early in her 1991 Meadowlands Pace elimination.
4. Ryan Anderson’s Breeders Crown win at age 20 in 2000 with Popcorn Penny.
5. A 1,000-1 shot (actually 1,023-1) in a million-dollar race — Amazing Fella. In happened in 1985 at Garden State Park in the Governor’s Cup won by Barberry Spur. He finished ninth in the 12-horse field, driven by Don Irvine, Jr.
6. A six-for-eight record in a single decade in the same million-dollar race. John Campbell had a streak in the 1990s of winning the North America Cup in six of eight drives.
7. Winning your first Breeders Crown race (Call Me Queen B) the same year you win the Triple Crown (Marion Marauder). It happened to Scotty Zeron in 2016, the same year he also surpassed $50 million in his career and won his first Meadowlands driving title.
8. Winning a Hambletonian heat and then two years later winning the Hambletonian final — all by age 25. Tommy Haughton did this in 1980 with Final Score at 23 and then took the whole pie with Speed Bowl in 1982 at age 25.
9. Lucky Jim’s 2009 Meadowlands season of 13-for-13-culminating in a world record 1:50.1 in the not-so-unlucky 13th try of the meet.
10. Winning your first two million-dollar races four days apart. Ron Waples did this in 1983, first capturing the Sweetheart with Shannon Fancy and then the Meadowlands Pace with his own Ralph Hanover.
11. Tim Tetrick’s seven divisional titles of 2012, including the top pair — stablemates Chapter Seven ($1 million winner) and Market Share ($2 million winner) from the Linda Toscano stable.
12 Forty-six years from your first Hambletonian appearance to your last — Delvin Miller from 1946 to 1992.