by Frank Cotolo

Part 1 is here.

Popularity — as Yogi Berra may have defined it — is merely a matter of how many people like you. Harness drivers do not have press agents campaigning to lift them from obscurity or maintain any kind of fanbase. But harness racing fans — bettors mostly — have always developed allegiance to personal favorites (or as Yogi may have defined them, ones you like better than other ones).

Most people may think a bettor’s darling drivers are based upon how much dough they assisted in contributing to a betting bankroll. It is hard to argue with that even though it rarely could be confirmed in any empirical study.

Casual bettors mostly find their driver heroes using generic statistics based upon seasonal records at their home track; these are the bettors likely to wager on horses due to the driver assigned. It is rarely a profitable state of mind but let us face it, none of the bettors keep accurate records if any at all concerning details about their betting choices (no less their bankrolls).

I was both a casual and a professional bettor over the decades and found in either case that any affection I developed for a driver was mathematical; that is, they met a set of elements common to two or more sets of my prejudice. Or, as Yogi may have defined it: I am partial to ones I like because of things I like more than other ones.

Enter the harness racing driver making the biggest impression on my relationship with the sport: Shelly Goudreau.

My individual set of elements made him qualify immediately when I was moving a bankroll at Western Harness Racing at Hollywood Park. Among a few affinitive elements marked by a community of my interests and similarity in nature or character, it was his French-Canadian connection (see my Aug. 14 column) that demanded my attention.

I did not search for any of his local or international stats. Before details I bought the images: I liked how he handled the sulky and looked stronger than the other drivers; he appeared to wear the sulky more than ride on it. A closer look revealed a handsome man with a moustache classically called “a horseshoe.”

In style he resembled a figure drawn by famed comic-book artist Jack Kirby (The Fantastic Four, Sargeant Rock, et al) whose heroes’ expressions were penned with defined muscles and invincible eyes always filled with determination. I liked and respected how he stood out among the other drivers, even if much of my evidence for that was because of my personal romantic set of heroic elements. In any event, it was a feeling no other driver on the west coast harness circuit gave me and I refused to ignore it. Good thing, to, because the man with the gold and orange silks went on to earn my reverent attitude.

There I was long before James Quinn convinced me to address all matters of intuition when handicapping measuring Goudreau’s value solely by embracing a “Yogi-ism.” The home-plate philosopher may have said, “Remember [Frank] that no matter what, 90 per cent of what you do is mental.”

But the “Shelly Factor” — as I deemed it — was working for me. My oblique acknowledgment of his importance to my wagers — a factor I learned later in my betting career was moot — produced dollars. And at that time of my life dollars were my salvation.

After cashing a considerable number of tickets helping me survive as a vagabond comedy writer, my career began to thrive. I took time off from the track. While I was gone the Shelly Factor met its demise in the worst way. Goudreau died in 1982 at age 34 as a result of a race accident at Hollywood Park.

In 1982 I interviewed a few west coast circuit drivers for a generic article in Gambling Times. One of them was veteran horseman Gerald Longo. I asked him about Goudreau’s accident which took place during a race. Longo walked me around the track and stopped at the spot where Goudreau hit the track hard to receive injuries that would be fatal a week later.

Goudreau’s fatal race added to a contemporary list of harness drivers’ deaths during races. When Billy Haughton died four years later in 1986, he was the fifth harness driver since 1979 to die in a race accident. That lethal result alone outnumbered all fatal driver accident deaths occurring from 1932 to 1978 (according to the U.S. Trotting Association). Any recorded number of drivers surviving severe accidents surely registers five digits.

The death and injury statistics defy all perceptions of crooked drivers. The facts are that harness horsemen steer their steeds with such precision they make every race look like a leisurely task; these horsemen don’t get the credit they deserve for making a death-defying act look uncomplicated.

Think harness drivers are not the subject of such irony? Tell that to Shelly Goudreau.