Welcome to Jug Week
by Bob Heyden
Let’s take a look at some Jug facts as we welcome in edition #80 on Sept. 18.
1. It’s the ninth time where only winning the final is required.
2. It’s the 20th anniversary of an actual new Jug trophy being required as the original one simply ran out of room.
3. Billy Haughton’s first Triple Crown race year was 1955 when Quick Chief won the first Cane as well as Haughton’s first Jug. His last Jug was with his own trainee Nihilator in 1985.
4. 2025 marks the 35th anniversary of the last trainer/driver to win the Jug. Ray Remmen won in 1990 with Beach Towel, later voted Horse of the Year.
5. 2012 was the year that Scott Zeron won the Jug with Michael’s Power at the tender age of 23, the youngest for any driver in any Triple Crown pacing event. Heck, Zeron was two years younger than Michael’s Power’s sire Camluck (25).
6. John Campbell’s first Triple Crown race win came with his own Merger in 1982. That’s right, he not only drove and trained, with brother Jimmy chipping in, the Albatross colt but he owned the freshman world record setter.
7. Nineteen of the last 37 Jugs have gone to a Canadian-born driver.
8. Adios, a foal of 1940, holds the record for consecutive Jugs as a sire with five, 1958-62; remember this was pre-Bret Hanover (1965).
9. Hanover has been in the name of 11 Jug winners.
10. In 79 Jugs, nine times the winning trainer was also owner or part-owner. Only Burke has done it multiple times (four).
11. Consecutive Jugs for a driver? It’s happened five times: Stanley Dancer (1961-62), Billy Haughton 1968-69), Bill O’Donnell (1985-86), Mike Lachance (1988-89), and Ron Pierce 1998-99).
12. Bob McIntosh will be honored in Ohio this week. He was famously quoted as having said, “I’d rather win the Jug than go to heaven.” He never did get one, but he did take home three Jugette trophies: So Fresh (1992), Electric Slide (1994), and L A Delight (2016).
THE JUGETTE
It’s the 55th edition of the companion race to the Little Brown Jug. After a record-breaking 2024 season, here are some Jugette facts:
1. The Jugette started the same year as the Hambletonian Oaks, 1971.
2. Towners Image set the stakes record of 1:52.3 in year 22 (1993) and it held for another dozen years until Just Wait Kate went 1:51.2 in 2005.
3. The first Jugette winner to surpass $1 million in her career was the 1984 winner Naughty But Nice.
4. Three trainers won the Jugette back-to-back: Casie Coleman (2010-11), Travis Alexander (2005-06), and Billy Haughton (1984-85), the last two he was in.
5. Twice female trainers won the Jugette three years in a row: Nancy Takter (2022), Linda Toscano (2023), and Jennifer Boegner (2024). It first occurred in the early 2000s with Tracy Brainard (2009) and
Casie Coleman back-to-back (2010-11).
6. Soft Shot was a $15,000 Jugette supplement in 2024.
7. Eternal Camnation won the 2000 Jugette en route to a still-holding female pacer career earnings mark of $3,748,574.
8. It’s been 24 years since the richest Jugette was won by Pleasure Chest for Mark Harder. The pot of $358,175 remains the high-water mark.
9. Ron Burke won the Jugette four times (2012, 2015, 2019, and 2021), while his father Mickey Burke took the 2007 edition with Western Graduate.
10. My Girl EJ won her elim in a record 1:49.1 last year, was favored in the final, and had a broken hobble hanger and broke stride.
11. In 1982, Three Diamonds won the first six-figure Jugette, $140,114, the highest ever at that point by $50G.
12. There has never been a Jugette winner named Horse of the Year.
