With 16,943 victories (through 1/25/22), Anthony Morgan sits second all-time among North American drivers in terms of wins behind Dave Palone (19,842) and if history is any indication, he'll reach 17,000 by the summer. With 16,943 victories (through 1/25/22), Anthony Morgan sits second all-time among North American drivers in terms of wins behind Dave Palone (19,842) and if history is any indication, he'll reach 17,000 by the summer.  At 63, the Ohio native that currently resides in Maryland continues to drive regularly on the east coast. While the days of him winning 1,004 races in a season (2006) are long gone, Morgan is still enjoying himself on the track. Perhaps somewhat outside the spotlight since he doesn't drive on the Grand Circuit anymore and never really enjoyed it when he did, Morgan took the time to discuss his journey and family history in Harness Racing, why he isn't in the Hall of Fame and what the sport needs to do to survive. How many generations does the Morgan family involvement go back in Harness Racing? Just about everyone in my family raced horses for six generations. They were owners, drivers and trainers.  Your father Eddie Morgan Jr won over 5,000 races as a driver. Did he set the path for your success?  As far as driving, yeah. He was an accomplished driver and taught me just about everything I know about driving horses. He gave me the opportunity because he had a lot of horses. They were cheap horses, but he carried about a 50-horse stable all the time, so I got a lot of opportunity to race. He also did a good job of promoting me when I was young. It worked out really well for me. Was there ever a chance that you wouldn't be involved in Harness Racing? When I was young, no, probably not. When I got older, if I had it all to do over again, I probably would've educated myself more in business. I had a lot of success early when I was young and it sent me down that path. I just didn't have a passion for anything else when I was young. Is it true that you won your first race at age 15? Do you remember that race? It was a horse named Peachakona. It was at Celina matinee. I started driving when I was 13. It was an amateur race at Detroit Matinee. I raced Matinees when I was 14 and 15. My dad would let me take the trailer to the Matinees every Sunday in the summer. We had a four-horse trailer and I could pretty much have my pick of any four that weren't racing that week. I was pretty put out when the good ones would get in because I couldn't take them, but even the cheaper ones were competitive in the Matinee races.  Your name has been mentioned as a mentor. Who were your mentors? My dad of course. I looked up to Herve Filion. He was the most like me, I thought. I'm not saying I was as good a driver as him, but he enjoyed the grind and racing every day. He did it because he loved it, not because of the titles or the money he won. He really had a passion for the sport and was a very good student of the game. The other one as far as driving ability was Michel Lachance.  What kind of car do you drive? Ford Fusion. It is a hybrid and gets great gas mileage. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? Shellfish; Peanut Butter. What is your favorite track to race at? Why? I enjoy racing on a half, so it would have to be Maywood Park. I had the most success there because I was there for so long. What is your favorite big event in racing? Why? Little Brown Jug. It is just one of the few races that still resembles the old school of heat racing. It is a half-mile track, so it takes a certain type of horse to win there. It can bring out the best or worst in a horse. There have been a lot of horses that went to Delaware and got beat, but if you can win there, you can win anywhere. How often are horses or racing on your mind? Most of the time. It is what I've loved to do for a living. I consider myself really fortunate. My grandfather said the luckiest people are those that don't have to work for anybody else and that would be me. As my wife tells me, pretty much all I do is have fun and get paid for it. She's got a point. What is your favorite thing to do outside of harness racing? I'm probably a frustrated inventor. It is usually horse-related stuff. I fool around and try to improve shoes, and harnesses and race bikes. What is your favorite sport to watch? Team? Horse racing, but I like UFC and mixed martial arts. Though since they raised the subscription rate on ESPN I'm not near as high on it as I was.  What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Everything. Harness racing has been everything to me for my life. Everything I've obtained or work for in life has come from harness racing, which is very fortunate because there are so many people in the sport who never had the breaks I've had or were able to put in the commitment to do what I do.  You are closing in on 17,000 career driving wins. What does that number mean to you? Those things aren't that important to me. They are more for my family. They are all in the business and it means a lot to all of them, a lot more than it means to me. I always tell people I raced horses to make my dad proud of me and that was a venue to do that. I also raced so I didn't have to have a day job; that was a perk. Do you think you get the credit and publicity you deserve for winning so many races? It is not something that I aspire to. I try to have a good day every day. I race horses because it is fun, not so I can reach milestones. It is important to me only for my family. For me to have a leg up like I had, I would consider myself a failure if I didn't make something of it.  ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter Statistically you are second all-time in wins and 11th in earnings. You also led North  America in wins five times. Why do you think you are not in the Hall of Fame? I don't know. It is a political thing. I never raced a lot of horses for the big breeders or for the people the gatekeepers to that. I just wasn't in that circle. I had some good friends that were Grand Circuit people. Bob Glazer gave me a lot of drives and Grand Circuit wins. As far as the people on the Hall of Fame Committees, they weren't fans of mine or people I hung around with. Stan Bergstein really had a distaste for me because I'd rather drive horses on a Saturday night rather than attend an awards banquet that he put on. That really got in his craw. He was very vocal about it and even called me up one year when I won the national driving title. He told me if I showed up, I'd get the biggest trophy I ever got and if I didn't I'd get salt [laughing]. That was after I missed a few of them. It was always on a Saturday night and I really liked driving horses and didn't want to miss it.  Looking at the major rulings against you in your career, the only thing that stands out is a 1994 60-day suspension. Could that be holding you back? I don't think so. I think a lot of it was back in the day I was President of our [horsemen's] association in Illinois and we went on strike a few times. Phil Langley and the Johnstons, especially Billy, not so much Duke, but Billy and Johnny Johnston felt like I cost them a lot of money. Langley and Bergstein were tight and I think that was the main thing for years. As far as the record goes, I think I have a way cleaner record than some of the other people. Things unfortunately happen from time to time with the way the trainer responsibility rule is and people get caught from time to time. If they are very successful, they get a black eye for it. If they aren't winning any races, nobody cares. I think sometimes people in this sport are criminalized for doing good and that is probably a shame. My stuff was very minor while there are people who have been at the top of the game who have served long suspensions and it doesn't seem to bother them. Is it fair to hold something from 20-plus years ago against you or anyone in the sport? That is in the eyes of the beholder. I can see it either way but what I can't see is one guy gets a pass and the other gets crucified. There are people who in the last 20 years served 10 years for race-fixing and they are allowed to race. I don't get it. I think Brett Pelling may be the best trainer I've ever driven for in my life and for them to hold it against him for things he served suspensions for and served his time; they were all for trainer responsibility rather than getting caught doing something to a horse. I think we give ourselves a black eye a lot of times when we shouldn't. It is unfortunate.  You've won a number of stakes races including the Jugette and Woodrow Wilson. What was your best moment in harness racing? I always say it is the last win I've had. Probably the things that meant the most to me were the last time my dad was here when I won a milestone race. I had a lot of fun driving Quik Pulse Mindale. My favorite horses are usually the last one I drove or ones that simply had characteristics of horses that I like to race.  At 63, you are still competing regularly. What keeps the fire alive for you?  I just like the daily grind. I enjoy racing a lot. There are guys who like to go somewhere to drive one stakes horse but that never turned my wheel. I've done it because people wanted me to but never because I wanted to. I'd rather stay home and race 12 than 1 on the road for big money. Is retirement in the near future? These young guys beat me up every night, but I still enjoy it. When I don't, I'll quit. I've been fortunate enough to make a little money that I can probably get by without it, but I still like it. What is the best advice you could give about harness racing? Young drivers, I always tell them that they need to save their money. When you are young you think the money comes so easy that it will last forever. I always tell them that the money you save before you're 40 will make you rich and the money you put away after you are 40 will just get you by.  The other thing I tell owners that want to get in the business is that you always want a trainer that wants you but never want a trainer that needs you. You want someone that appreciates you but not someone that has to have you there, because they just can't make objective decisions about your horses all the time. They tend to keep the horses too long because they need the money or they would sell them too quick because they need the money now or they race them too high in class so they won't lose them. I just think if you have someone that wants you but doesn't need you, they can make an objective decision all the time and that is more productive for an owner. Is there one race that you still want to win in your career? Not really. I've always been a day-to-day guy who thrived on driving every night. When I was in Chicago, we raced 360 nights a year and it was the best. You moved from the Chicago circuit to Delaware in 2006. Was that a difficult move? Any regrets? No regrets at all. I really thought that Chicago races in terms of money was gone and it wasn't coming back for the foreseeable future. I didn't think they were going to get slots for a long time and I didn't think they would be that lucrative if they did get them. It turned out to be a good move. I've always had a guardian angel looking out for me and helped me to make the right decisions. I moved here to retire. I thought because of the political climate the slot subsidy was as safe as it was anywhere. It is not as lucrative as Pennsylvania or these other jurisdictions, but it is such a small state that everybody knows the handful of politicians and there is no big business outside of racing, slots, agriculture and credit card companies. There is no big industry or cities, so there is no draw on that subsidy like in other states. In Pennsylvania or New York, those big cities like Philadelphia, from a budget point of view, they create a black hole you can never fill. They can't sustain any revenue stream to balance the budget. Years ago they had the lottery come in to pay for their revenue stream and then 10 years later they are looking for more because they spent all that money and then some. So that's why I moved to Delaware. I thought it was safer and a good spot to retire. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? The biggest threat that I see to the business right now is that we don't breed enough horses. I try to be a good forecaster because I think that is what keeps you relevant. You have to be a good student. If you stand back objectively, the thing that constantly costs us racing opportunities is a shortage of horses. We don't breed enough and there is just not enough incentive to breed. There is a little money at the top but probably not overall. The only ones that really make money are places like Hanover that get a huge subsidy from the state from the slots. A state like Delaware, they have no incentive at all to breed horses. They have six races at 2 and six races at 3 and they are done. I just think that is a shame. They should have incentives so people will breed them. Indiana, in that regard, has the best program. They a lot 50-something percent of their total purse allotment to Indiana-breds. They are self-sufficient and don't need outside horses to race. In Delaware, there are only a couple of hundred bred a year. We don't breed enough in Delaware to have even a card for a week. How do you view the future of harness racing? Everything changes and every generation complains that they wish it could go back to the way it used to be. The key to be successful is to forecast and get ahead of the curve. Tracks are cutting days because they can because they don't have enough horses. None of the slot tracks want to race. They view us as a tax at millions a year so they can have slots. Not having horses allows the tracks to cut another day or another card of racing. So we need to figure out a way to get more horses. Time for the stretch drive.  Best Horse you ever saw: Somebeachsomewhere. He was the most impressive horse that I ever raced against. Best Trainer: Brett Pelling, hands-down. I think there are people who are better at some things than Brett is but as far as training and conditioning a horse there is no comparing him to anybody. Lasix -- Yes or No?: Yes, absolutely. That is one thing that contributes more to the longevity of a horses' racing career than any one thing we do. Horses bleed, and for us to stick our heads in the sand and say it is not worth the trade-off because people can cheat with it, which is all baloney, it's crazy. If we lose 20 percent of our horses due to not having Lasix, what will that do to our business? Favorite TV Show?: That 70's Show. Trotters or Pacers?: Doesn't matter, as long as they aren't Thoroughbreds. I never cared for them. They don't race often enough.