Avengers assemble

The partnership of Bill Pollock, Bruce Areman and Andrew Harris hope the sky’s the limit after acquiring more top yearlings and proven stars. In all, they have spent nearly $12 million on horses in two years.

by Debbie Little

It’s been over a year since the then fledgling partnership of Bill Pollock, Bruce Areman and Andrew Harris made a splash at the 2023 Lexington Selected Yearling Sale, purchasing 10 yearlings for a total of $3,550,000; they added eight more a month later at Harrisburg to the tune of $1,818,000.

Many in their stable of around 50 have found their way to the winner’s circle, but the partnership appears to be particularly proud of the job done this year by the OG of their barn, Abuckabett Hanover.

Abuckabett Hanover, winner of the William Haughton Memorial, Dayton Pacing Derby, Dave Brower Memorial, and Potomac Pace, will next be seen in the FanDuel Championships Open Pace on Saturday (Nov. 30) at The Meadowlands.

“Bucky,” as they call him, is the top-ranked older male pacer in the weekly Hambletonian Society/Breeders Crown Standardbred Poll and current front runner for Dan Patch divisional honors.

“You know why I’m happy if Bucky is lucky enough to win?” said Pollock, who admitted he talks about the stallion like he’s a person. “He toiled behind Bulldog Hanover, Allywag Hanover, Tattoo Artist, a lot of great, great horses, and he was always in their shadow, and now this year, I feel he really broke out on his own and really did a good job.

“I’m so happy for him. I know he doesn’t know he might win it, but I’m so thrilled for him. I think we have a very good shot at it. Plus, if he’s successful in the FanDuel, he’ll cross $2 million lifetime.”

When it comes to the possibility of winning a Dan Patch Award, Harris is excited, but doesn’t want to put the cart before the horse.

“It’s just amazing to see the horse that started this whole thing is the one that’s carrying the torch and possibly has a chance of winning Aged Pacer this year, and that would be the icing on the cake,” Harris said of Abuckabett Hanover. “How many people have the first horse that they’ve ever bought in the business, albeit not the first year they bought it, but eventually goes out to get an Aged Pacer award? That would be pretty cool.

“I mean, they bought [Abuckabett] in late 2022 and raced him once, and then had him for two years now, and he’s rocking out and doing his thing.”

Pollock said he’s 80 to 90 per cent sure that Bucky will race again next year.

“I mean, it’s too much fun watching him race and win, and it doesn’t seem to take a toll on him,” Pollock said. “Andrew said [Monday] in the barn, it was like he didn’t even race on Sunday [Nov. 17 in the Potomac Pace]. He’s good. You know, these horses, for me, don’t come along all the time. So, I want to really enjoy him, and he’s fun to watch… Now, if his knees were sore, I said I wouldn’t do it, but he’s in such great shape, it’d be a shame for us not to enjoy him. And Andrew, I’ve told people this before, absolutely loves this horse more than any horse in that whole barn. He said for two-and-a-half years the first horse he jogged every morning was Abuckabett Hanover.

“If they told me that Bucky has a cold and can’t race in the FanDuel or it would be trouble, I would never race him. I wouldn’t care if we lost the [Older] Pacer [award]. We love the animals.”

Harris said he’s excited to see many of their horses race in 2025.

“I’m looking forward to so many coming back next year,” Harris said. “I mean, we have probably assembled the greatest team since The Avengers.

“I can’t wait to see Abuckabett come back, obviously, Seven [Colors] and El Rey. We’re going to have Funtime Bayama come back. Hopefully, he comes back to be great. I’m hoping that Captain Luke comes back to be good and we’ve got Voguish and Monserrate. Now we’ve got My Girl EJ, we also got Yo Tillie.

“You know, we’ve got a couple of fillies that were really good this year, like Lily White Hanover, Treacheryinthedark, and Millie May Hanover. And then we got a few that were unraced at 2 that I’m excited to come back and see. I think Penny Benjamin is going to come back to be a really, really nice filly. We had to quit with her because she got a little bit sore on us. We’ve got a strong contingent to come back with next year and to pick one out, other than Bucky, who’s just my natural favorite, is really hard to do.”

On Monday (Nov. 18), My Girl EJ became the latest edition to their stable following a winning bid of $758,000.

According to Harris, the three partners gathered at Pollock’s house along with Pollock’s wife and son for the Preferred Equine Online sale.

Pollock said with 10 seconds remaining in the sale, the group started counting down out loud like you would on New Year’s Eve.

“And a guy put another bid in with one second, and we were all shocked,” Pollock said. “And then we bid again, and then the guy dropped out.”

As a former professional softball player, Pollock has that competitive spirit, and as a result, said he doesn’t like to go to sales because sometimes he’d think about staying in longer than he should. That competitive nature has passed down to his 15-year-old son, Billy, who is a talented soccer player.

“He wanted the horse,” Pollock said of his son and My Girl EJ. “He was telling me, now when you look at the bidding, people have a code, letters, for their bid. One guy bidding was VR59 and when we were bidding, he kept going over top of us, and my son turned to me and said, ‘Dad, I don’t know if it’s worth it, but I really want to beat VR59.’ And of course, we ended up beating VR59, so he was happy about that.”

Pollock said a lot of what he’s doing is setting up something for his son to enjoy in the future.

“His future after soccer, whatever it is, short term, long term, is going to be the barn and harness racing,” Pollock said. “He loves it.”

In buying My Girl EJ, the “Pollock Posse” have thoughts for her future beyond just racing.

“That’s our plans for going forward,” Pollock said. “I want to have something besides buy a horse, race, see how they do, then get the next horse. I want to develop something for my son in the future, and I’d like to be in the breeding side of it and see how that works out.”

It’s a formula that has proven successful for others, especially the Burkes.

“Look, I don’t know [the Burkes] personally, and I don’t know too much about them, other than they’re just the biggest name in harness racing,” Pollock said. “And I have the utmost respect for anybody who can handle three or four hundred horses. It’s amazing, and it’s a family business with their relatives involved. I have nothing but the highest regard for the Burkes and the Burke Racing Stable. I’m not going to even disrespect them by saying it’s a blueprint to follow. They’re so far more advanced, but it really is the roadmap of how to get involved in harness racing the way they did it. I’m really amazed at what they developed.

“Well, what I learned after the first year, if you want a great horse, you can’t buy four horses and think a great one’s going to be in those four, you’re going to have to buy more.”

This year, according to Pollock, they had a somewhat more conservative approach to the sales. They bought 15 yearlings for $5,115,000, followed by two more at Harrisburg for $1,400,000, including Cambridge Hanover, the first million-dollar yearling in the 86-year history of the Harrisburg sale. That’s a total of $11,883,000 spent at the sales in two years. They also were the underbidders on 3-year-old trotter Amazing Catch, who sold to Greg Luther for $1.85 million at this year’s Harrisburg Mixed Sale. Even though Pollock, Areman and Harris spent more money than in 2023, they stuck with their process and passed on several that they wanted that went for too much.

“[At the sale in Lexington, Harris] had a number in mind, and he’s historically low on his bidding,” Pollock said. “[Harris said], ‘We’re going to assign a figure to [the yearlings],’ because he’s always worried about how much we’re spending, and if it goes over that, we’re not going to get it. That’s the process. The first horse we use it on, we lose… And then another one came up, I think a relative of Voguish, that we didn’t get which we wanted, which me and [my son] loved and wanted. Then I said, ‘Look, I don’t know if I’m going to keep going with this process, Andrew. I want some horses.’ But it worked out. It worked out well. Andrew knows what he’s doing.

“There are a lot of horses that we’ve turned down that people have called about that we thought were outrageous prices.”

When asked if he ever thinks about how far they’ve come in such a short period of time, Pollock said, “No. You know who understands that better than anybody is my partner, Bruce. I’ve never done this before, so I don’t know if this is moving fast, this is going slow, this is what everybody does. I don’t know what everybody did or does. I know the reaction some people get.

“But, I mean, I tried to build a barn fast, like I told [Dave Little] on the set [at The Meadowlands], I said, ‘Look, if I was 40, I’d do it like everybody else does, I’d try to breed them, I’d try to do everything. I’ve got time, but I ain’t got that much time to play around here.’”