What came first, the chicken or the egg? Thankfully, harness racing doesn’t perplex us with such existential queries. Outside of each individual handicapping puzzle called races, we have only a few pressing questions. Today we’ll tackle one: How vital is the driver as opposed to the horse in winning races? As a personal rule of thumb for handicapping purposes, the difference between a low-percentage driver and a top driver is about two seconds. That doesn’t mean every time Tim Tetrick jumps in the bike for a driver who wins infrequently that the horse will improve dramatically. There are levels of low-rung drivers and you have to know the difference between someone who doesn’t win often and a person who simply lacks the talent to win. After months of research, almost unanimously drivers and trainers agree that the horse is the main cog in the winning equation, but the level of importance seems to differ greatly depending on who you ask. Whether trainers, drivers, or horsemen that pull double duty on a regular basis, some are a bit more willing to buoy the importance of the person in the sulky than others. Ray Schnittker, who has nearly 2,800 driving victories and over 1,250 training wins, allotted the least amount of credit to driver saying that they deserve 2 percent of the credit to the horses’ 98 percent. “I’ve won about every big race, most of them multiple times, so the proof is in the pudding,” said Schnittker, a Hambletonian-winning driver behind Deweycheatumnhowe, when asked why he chooses to drive his own horses. Coming in a close second was trainer Chris Ryder who allotted just 5 percent of a horse’s success in a race to the driver. “If drivers are so good, why don’t they take the 20-1 shots?” said Ryder, who has over 1,500 training wins and 312 as a driver. Of the 20 random horsemen questioned, trainer Rene Allard gave drivers the highest accolades in terms of percentage saying they account for 25 percent of the equation. On average, the group ascribed 13 percent to drivers and 86 percent to trainers. So where did the other 1 percent go? Luck! “You can etch this in stone,” said driver Mark Beckwith, a winner of nearly 5,700 races in the bike and 250 as a trainer. “It is exactly 85 percent horse, 10 percent driver and 5 percent luck. That’s the way it has always been and until a driver is latched to the shafts and a horse is in the seat, that’s the way it will always be. “You can call it luck, you can call it karma or call it God; you need it. It is big. It is the difference between winning and losing and the difference between getting home unscathed sometimes.” Hall of Fame driver Mike Lachance felt the need to separate different aspects of the sport when determining the importance of the man or woman behind the lines. “In stakes races the horse is about 80 percent of the battle. In overnights the horse is 90 percent of the battle,” said Lachance. “In stakes, the top driver means more. A lot of guys go behind the gate for $1,000,000, I’ve seen their faces many times and they are not the same. With bigger purses, some people are better.” Along those lines, a common theme brought up by most participants was that top drivers are more likely to make winning decisions regardless of the caliber of horse they steer. A great horse can make an average driver look good but there is a larger margin for error. Double Hall of Fame (U.S. and Canada) trainer Blair Burgess agreed. What the top drivers have is the ability to perform under high pressure. “You don’t hire those guys to make them go faster. You hire them to not make mistakes. They are less likely to screw up,” said Burgess. “I used John Campbell not because he was going to make the horse better but because he wasn’t going to do anything stupid or succumb to pressure that slightly lesser guys who are good drivers might.”  “If you put a good driver on a good horse, you’ll get the best possible result. If you put a bad driver on a good horse, anything can happen,” said trainer Jim Campbell, a winner of over 1,200 races. We’ve often heard of horses that perform better over certain surfaces. In Thoroughbred racing, some horses perform better over the dirt or the turf. In Standardbred racing, you’ll find horses like City Hall, who has nine wins in 22 starts at The Meadowlands over the last three years. The same formula can hold true with drivers. Some 15 years ago, I owned and drove a horse named Kentucky Flyer. No matter what I did, she simply wouldn’t go forward for me. In 18 starts with my yellow and blue colors sitting in the bike behind her, she won zero races. Meanwhile, Kentucky Flyer won 10 times in 60 starts with professional drivers during that period. Some people would just assume I sucked as a driver and move on, and perhaps that is partially true, but I did compile a 41-3-4-1 record according to USTA records, so it wasn’t like I was incapable of winning. Another horse I owned and drove, Call Me Cam, won two of 10 starts with my semi-capable hands at the lines and went 0-for-25 with the pros in the bike during the 2000 season. “I think some drivers connect with horses better than others. I think it has to be a balance,” said trainer George Teague, Jr, a mainstay as a trainer on the stakes scene and a winner of 1,631 career races. Two-time national dash-driving winner Ronnie Wrenn, Jr agreed with Teague but also brought another vital characteristic into the mix – Confidence. Similar to a baseball player who would go on a hot streak, the winner of over 5,300 races in just nine seasons of driving said success breeds success. “Certain drivers have more success and are more confident in themselves,” said Wrenn. “If you are having more success on the track, you are probably going to have more confidence with a horse that is a longer shot. A guy that drives longshots every week and is driving for checks is probably not going to have the same confidence and won’t drive them the same way.” One factor many handicappers don’t take into account when considering who is driving each horse is the owner’s impact on the decision. It’s not uncommon to hear a trainer say in confidence that they’d like to change the driver but the owner is insistent on staying with the current person. “If I get a good enough horse, I can name 10 drivers who can drive him. Just give me the horse and I can find someone to drive it,” said Teague. “A lot of times it is hard convincing owners of that. If they don’t get their favorite driver, they’ll sit there like the world was coming to an end. I tell them, I’ll tell the grooms not to do their extra work, I won’t train them, and we’ll just put your driver up and see how good they do.” There is also an unwritten rule in the sport about sticking with drivers from previous starts. Check out any random set of past performances and you’ll notice that when a new driver gets a chance on a horse, they tend to get listed again the following week. Paul Kelley, who has run a successful boutique operation as a trainer for decades, told us that it pays off to stay loyal to drivers. “It’s like anything else, like in Hockey, the coaches are constantly changing lines and defensive pairings. I think you have to look at each case and race individually before you put too much blame on a driver,” said Kelley. “I’m kind of a loyal guy. I tend to work with just a couple of drivers because they give me good feedback and we are on the right wavelength. But owners are paying the bills and often times they see things differently.” While uniformly everyone agreed that the top seven to 10 drivers in the sport are basically on even footing, it is possible for a young and hungry newcomer to move a horse up. Brian Sears may be a far superior driver to ‘Joe Newcomer’ in experience and ability, but Joe might be more willing to rev a horse up and take a chance while Brian could play it smart and try to trip-out his horse. “The confidence of youth is sometimes stupid confidence, but at times it works out,” said Burgess. Unlike most sports where an individual makes their own decisions, asks trainers for treatment or coaches for input and puts it to practical use, horse racing has many more outside variables. Drivers clearly play a role in the outcome of each race and trainers/caretakers are an even larger factor as they spend more time around the equine athletes than anyone, but do they truly know if a horse is feeling a bit under the weather on any certain day? If trainers were in the know beforehand, we wouldn’t see so many horses getting scoped for possible sickness after the races. Ultimately, a trainer can do their job perfectly and a driver can steer the race of their life, but the horse can still lose. Because in the words of top Midwest driver Chris Page, “It all comes down to the horsepower.”