What kind of car do you drive? I have a truck and some cars. My daughter drives a nice car, I don't care what I drive. My daughter has a Lexus SUV and I have like an 1984 Dodge. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? Pizza and cheeseburgers; there's nothing else. For snack, Hershey Bars. What is your favorite track to race at? Why? When I was at The Meadowlands I liked that a lot. I tend to drive and do a lot better against real drivers and real trainers. As a driver I'm one of those people who never gets nervous. Nothing bothers me whether we are going for $12 or $12 million. I guess I'm way better when the money is down or there is some importance.  What is your favorite big event in racing? I look at races that mean something. People that are in the Hambletonian and North America Cup tend to be there every year, but the ones that are in the Orange and Blue or something in Illinois, where half the people are pig farmers that bought a yearling and have a shot at a touchdown, that interests me a lot because some of the people who need the money get to make it.  How often is racing on your mind? All day, every day. I have a lot of different aspects in racing. My outlook on racing is way more economics than ego. If everyone worried about economics as much as they did ego, it would be a better sport. What is your favorite thing to do outside of racing? I like to fish. I hate people yet I'm a people person. This might sound stupid but I'm kind of a celebrity in the business. I'm the funny guy that shows up. My spectrum is very broad in this business, so when I show up at someone's barn, they always tend to be pretty happy. Whether I show up at The Meadowlands or Brian Brown's barn, people seem to be happy to see me. So for me, showing up someplace unexpectedly and making people laugh is something I like to do.   What is your favorite sport to watch? Team? When I was younger I won the MVP for Defensive Player of the Year twice because I got the most tackles. It was the same year as the 1985 Chicago Bears. The day after I got the trophy we were watching the Bears game and my brother jumped up and he high-fived me because the Bears got a first down. He was like, 'aren't you excited?' and I said 'excited about what?' I didn't know what a first down was. My brother was a good player and I didn't want to embarrass him by asking how to play the game, so I just played it without understanding it. One day I bet $50 on a game and by halftime I was a master, because once you gamble on a game you instantly learn how it works. So now I watch football as much as anything. My least favorite is that stupid hockey. I don't believe in teams. The players change every year so I follow players. I love Tom Brady and [Julian] Edelman because of his toughness. I love people that can achieve greatness and I feel achieving it is probably easy, but doing it from zero is difficult.   What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don't know? I was always a fat kid so the chances of me ever driving horses was zero. When I was a kid I was a superstar. When I was 21 or 22 years old, I was the leading driver at every track I went to. Then I got too fat to drive horses. People didn't realize that I could even drive horses. Jim Morrill Jr. once told me that I was the best fat driver who ever lived. I always took that as a compliment. You drove regularly from 1992 to 2008 then only sporadically until the last couple of years. Why did you start driving more again? Was it just the weight loss? Yeah, 100 percent. There are two kinds of great drivers. Of course Brian Sears and Tim Tetrick are great, but there are guys who are really good at reading programs, like Jason Bartlett and Brent Holland. These guys are sharp. They are strategic, really good at reading a program, drivers. As the saying goes, those who can't, teach. I really know how to read programs. I really know a lot about the business and the other horses. I drive horses at Northfield and they don't drive strategically. It is just a "go" place. For me to drive correctly I have to go against "correct" drivers. You can't play chess against checker players. That's my style of driving. Is that why you have been driving more at Yonkers lately? I moved to Northfield and I love it, but they don't go for as much money as on the East Coast. I basically bought a house that I really couldn't afford and I had one year to pay for it and I figured if I'm going to get the couple-hundred thousand I need by July I better race some horses where you can get a touchdown.  Looking back at your history, it seems you've raced at almost every track in the country at one point. Do you like change? When I was a kid I assumed I was a superstar because I won so much. Then I realized that being a superstar in this sport is easy. I can take a 22-year-old paper boy and teach him how to win races if he had horses like some of the top trainers. The most important thing you need to win horse races is to be in them. You can't win the Filly and Mare Open if you aren't in it. You are only as good as the horses you get to race. So before you accept a trainer's greatness, look at the horses they are racing. Good horses will win and bad horses will lose. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? There really isn't one word to describe how management has totally messed up a sport that was so great.  How did you get started in the sport?  My father opened Midwest Horse Spa which is a training facility. After the first day I went there I told everyone I was going to be a driver. My brother [George Clegg II] and my brother-in-law [Roger Lyall] said I'll never be a driver because I was too fat. To this day I've won more races than they've driven combined.  Was there ever a chance that you wouldn't be involved in harness racing? I'm glad I did get involved because I'm sure I would be in a penitentiary somewhere if I didn't. I would've been stuck in Moline, Illinois wondering how I could possibly achieve greatness and the avaneues for that are very short there. I'm sure I would've ended up being a drug dealer or stealing cars because I wouldn't have sat there and not achieved greatness.  There are 19 Clegg's listed on the USTA's Pathway system. How many relatives do you have in the business? Just two and of course my wife Betty makes three. In addition to over 700 driving wins you also have more than 400 as a trainer. Are you a better trainer or driver? I couldn't train a hungry dog to eat Alpo. I tell people all the time, some of the horses I have that are good, if a real horse trainer had them they'd be really good. I'm really good at fixing lame horses. What would take the average trainer that you think is smart . . . what would take them three weeks, four vets, two vet clinics and an act of Congress, I would find out why the horse is lame in five minutes. What is the best advice you've ever gotten about harness racing? It's always the foot. When a horse is lame and he wasn't lame yesterday and you are going crazy and x-raying, it is always the foot.  What was your favorite moment in harness racing? My first horse I ever drove at The Meadowlands [Special Destiny] was a great moment. Another one that is a great story . . . we had a horse in-to-go that I bought for $1,000 and he was in a $17,500 claimer at Balmoral. I got everything ready and we barely had enough money to get to the track at the time. We put the horse in the trailer and the starter went out on my truck. We only had 15 minutes of leeway before we had to leave. So I went to a used car dealership knowing it was a quarter to five and asked them if I could buy a truck today knowing they would be looking to get out of there at 5pm. I asked if I could test drive one of the trucks and they told me they were getting ready to close so I could test drive it overnight. I was able to get the truck back home, hook the trailer up and get the horse to the track, and he won. I remember Gary Siedelman, who just died and was my best friend, said to me 'oh my God Nick, can you believe they are going to hand us $4,500?' Back then that was like $265,000 to us. That was a wonderful moment in my life. Which is the best horse you've ever trained or driven? Rampage Jackson. He changed our lives. We bought Rampage Jackson's full baby brother as a yearling last fall and I bought him the same day that my father died. His famous saying was 'never better' so when we bought him, and he looks just like Rampage Jackson, we named him Georgecleggnevrbtr. Which horse is/was your favorite? My wife's favorite is Visible Gold. He's like the barn mascot and is like 1,800 pounds. What's the one race that you most want to win in your career? The next one. You are very active on social media. Is harness racing missing the boat on that opportunity to reach a general audience? There isn't even a question about it. If any of these racetracks would hire me for one month, I'd have 5,000 people in the grandstand on Saturday nights. You have a few on- and off-track conduct violations. Are those an indication of how seriously you take racing? No. The problem is that horsemen are like kids in junior high school. They think it is ok to mouth-off to people because they think the principal will come to save them. Most horsemen are not real-world people because if you talk shit to people in the real world they will knock you out. Some people just said things to me they probably shouldn't have.  If you could choose any horse in history to train or drive, which horse would it be and why? Probably Well Said so I could've gelded him and his offspring wouldn't be torturing me.  If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? People forget that we bet on this. That's what makes it a sport. Ultimately it is about random numbers. I love racing in seven to eight-horse fields because I have a better chance of making money, but for people to be able to bet on the sport it needs bigger fields.  How do you view the future of harness racing? Pay for play. I think races will eventually have entry fees. Somebody has to pay for the purses because at some point the casino money will be gone.  You recently had a pacer that you made into a trotter. What was that about? The race office would reach out every week looking for Non-winners-of-1 trotters. So I said to my wife, we have 20 horses here, surely one of them can trot. She said, 'Nick, none of them are trotters.' I said, we'll turn one of them into a trotter. I had this pacing filly [Delight Kate] and I trained her on the trot and qualified her the next day on the trot. She ended up winning a race on the trot. Time for the stretch drive: Lasix -- Yes or No?: I have a problem with Lasix. If you get shot in the chest, when you go to the emergency room they don't give you Lasix. So what does Lasix do? I understand that it makes horses 50 pounds lighter when they race and it lowers their blood pressure, but it isn't a proven drug for bleeding. I just don't get how one coincides with the other. I love Lasix. It does help horses, but there is no proven link that it helps for bleeding.  Favorite TV Show?: Family Guy Trotters or Pacers?: I like both but you have to be an idiot to have trotters because they'll drive you crazy.