Joel Kravet remains in the business for the love of the horse

by Murray Brown

I have never met Joel Kravet in the flesh, but I consider him to be a friend. I’ve now been writing this column for going on seven years. For most of that time, Kravet has been sending me emails, sometimes relating to a specific column, or others relating to his experience in our sport — sometimes just speaking of his outlook on harness racing in general terms.

I felt as though I knew him, yet speaking realistically, I hardly know him at all. What I did know is that he is what I would describe as a “lifer,” someone who has been involved with our sport for the longest of times and someone who has very deep feelings for it.

For how long? I had no idea. It was time to find out. We had an extended conversation on Tuesday (June 9) where we discussed many topics, most of them harness horse related and relating to his history in the sport.

Tell me something about yourself.

“I’m a New Yorker, bred, born, and raised. I was raised in the Bronx, but have lived in Manhattan for all my adult life. I’m now 83 years old. Like many New Yorkers who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s I started going to the ‘trotters’ when Roosevelt and Yonkers Raceways were among the places to be.

“People today might find it hard to believe, but back then harness racing was a major league sport. There were many days when harness racing drew more people than the Yankees, the Knicks, the Rangers or the football Giants.

“Like most of my friends, we started sneaking into the track even before we became of legal age to do it.

“While in college, I was in a serious car accident which resulted in my schooling becoming interrupted. I needed to get a job. I asked myself, why not get a job at the trotters?”

So, what did you do?

“It was 1967. I went to the stable gate at Roosevelt and asked if anybody was looking for help. As it happened, Jim Hackett happened to be going by at about that time and asked me what experience I had around horses. I answered honestly that I had none, but I was willing to work and wanted to learn. He then asked if I drank or did drugs. I responded in the negative. He said that since I had no experience with horses, he couldn’t put me to work with them. But he had an exceptional 3-year-old pacing colt for which the insurance policy required that it had 24-hour care. He needed a night watchman for the colt. The colt’s name was Best Of All and he sure enough lived up to his name and to the opinion Hackett had of him. He became a world champion and a winner of the Little Brown Jug, when that was pacing’s major race, and to some still is, and pacing’s equivalent to The Hambletonian.

“When Hackett moved his stable back to stable owner Samuel Huttenbauer’s farm near Cincinnati, he took me along. He put me in the charge of his assistant Bud Parshall who he told to make a good groom of me. Parshall was an outstanding horseman and I enjoyed working there, but soon learned that I probably didn’t have much of a future in the horse business, at least not as a groom.

“I returned to school and continued going to the track. I also occasionally would take a trip to Philadelphia and attend the races at Liberty Bell Park. One evening while walking through the paddock there, I met John Patterson, Jr. known to most people as Sonny. I asked him for a job. He gave me his dad’s phone number and told me to call him in Georgia. I called and Mr. Patterson told me that if I could get to their training center in Dalton, that he would have a job waiting for me.

“Sonny was a quiet introspective sort of guy, but we hit it off, quickly becoming friends. I apparently hadn’t gotten working with the horses out of my blood. So, I took a bus to Georgia and soon enough I was rubbing two head in the Patterson Stable. I stayed there for about three years and became very close friends with Sonny and developed a great admiration of his dad John Patterson, Sr. I have yet to meet a person who I would rate ahead of Mr. Patterson, either as a man or as a horseman. They don’t make them any better.

“I had stopped working with the horses, but still maintained an avid interest in them. Sonny and I began owning horses together. We’d buy them cheap, concentrating on horses eligible to the New York Sire Stakes. Sonny would make racehorses from them and we would then sell them at a profit. We did quite well for some time. Then Sonny got into a terrible accident where he broke his foot. For some unknown reason, it never healed properly and he wasn’t able to continue his career as one of the very best to ever sit behind a horse, especially a trotter.”

What did you do after you stopped working with the Pattersons?

“I went into the dry-cleaning business with my wife and a friend of mine. It is where I still am involved today. We started a firm called Atthorp Cleaners on W 79th Street in Manhattan. After 43 years, the firm and I are still there. But the dry-cleaning business has had to change with the times. When we began, all our business was over the counter. Today the vast majority of it is pick-up and delivery. We had to adapt and we did. I see not being able to adapt as one of the major reasons why our sport is just hanging on. With harness racing, I see less and less motivation being put upon the love of the horse and its development and more and more on the money to be gained by being in it. Don’t get me wrong. I see the need for monetary success, but I think the desire for profit has overcome the love of the horse and the joie de vivre that goes with being involved in the ownership of horses.

“I never stopped owning and to some degree managing horses. I own pieces of all sorts of horses, racehorses, broodmares, yearlings, and babies. I doubt that there will ever be a time when I’m not involved. It’s in my blood. I still follow the sport as closely as I am able to. I’m one of the few today who still loves going to the races. My major problem is that I loved going with friends. Sadly, most of my friends have now passed away.

“I’m still involved both individually and as a shareholder in Anthony MacDonald’s The Stable. I still avidly peruse all the yearling catalogs and tell Anthony which horses I like. If he should buy one who’s pedigree I like and for which a vacancy exists with his group of owners, I am available to come in as a part owner.

“As for my likes, I much prefer trotters to pacers, I suppose that comes from my experience with the Pattersons.”