What kind of car do you drive? 2018 Black Nissan Altima. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? Stone crabs, but since that's only for special occasions, marinated flank steak. My cheating snacks are potato chips and chocolate chip cookies. What is your favorite all-time track to visit? Why? Since The Red Mile is now considered my "home track," it's The Meadowlands. I actually had never been there before I started working at The Horseman in 1998, and it's always exciting to be there. You do some handicapping. How often do you play the races? I love to handicap and when I give out horizontal plays, like Pick 4s, I usually back my picks with my dollars. As for straight wagering, I do it every so often if I'm watching races and see a horse at odds that I believe are too high. What is your favorite big event in racing? Why? The Hambletonian. What a great race to be the centerpiece of a great day of racing. The Breeders Crown and Kentucky Futurity day complete the trifecta. What is your favorite sport to watch? Team? Since I'm named after Gordie Howe I've always been a huge hockey fan, although in Kentucky hockey news and scores are usually buried. Although I left my Detroit roots in 1998, I am still a huge fan of all the teams. Right now my only wish is that the Lions reach the Super Bowl once in my lifetime, although now I think I should just settle for winning a playoff game. What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don't know? I think that I have shared ownership in three horses over the years, although none recently. Win Alma D, a pretty good trotter who had terrible luck in the Michigan Sires Stakes final when he got caught first-over and missed a check. Hey Diddle Diddle, who we gave chances to on the trot and as a pacer, and a few trainers trying to straighten him out. And Right Please, a free-legged pacing mare my long-ago high school friend Gary Katz and I claimed for $12,500, and was able to step up into the open class. She set a track record at Northville Downs just a couple starts after we claimed her. Great job by trainer Dave Robertson. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Passion. I wasn't born into the sport, I came into by being a fan and being in the right place at the right time. A couple of times. How did harness racing enter your life? My father would take my brother and I on occasion to the Thoroughbred races at Hazel Park and on Michigan Mile day at Detroit Race Course. That was my first exposure to horse racing. When I got into high school some older friends talked me into going to the harness races at night, and I was hooked my first trip. It got to the point where my high school locker didn't have room for any books as it was filled with racing programs, and I started skipping classes so I could go to qualifiers. When you started in the late 1970s and early 1980s, what was it like working at Hazel Park? I thought I hit the jackpot. I was there every night anyways as a fan and bettor, and now I was getting paid to be there. When I started in 1979 we still had huge crowds, with betting topping $1 million on Friday and Saturday nights when the place was filled with people, and nearly $1 million on Mondays. And that was when it was just 10 races a night and no simulcasting. You often talk of "crazy times" at Hazel. What's the craziest thing you can recall? After thinking about this, I think maybe the craziest thing was when the money room was robbed during a race night of more than $200,000. I happened to be in the director's room when the phone rang and track owner Don MacFarlane answered it and I heard him say, 'What do you mean, we've been hit?" While no charges were ever filed, everybody in that room I believe was fired, including the security guard who just happened to forget to bring his gun that night. When that massive grandstand was knocked down for the new grandstand, I always hoped that the money would appear after being hidden in the bowels of the building for all those years. But it wasn't. How did you land at The Horseman and Fair World? Moira Fanning at The Hambletonian Society convinced me to attend the USHWA's annual awards banquet at Dover Downs in April of 1998. It was there that I ran into The Horseman's editor Kathy Parker. She and I go back many years before that (she and her husband, Dan Coon, were married in Detroit and I attended). Kathy told me she was looking for an associate editor, and I asked "What about me?" She was surprised I was interested, but she called a few weeks later and we made the deal. June 15, 1998, was my first day in the office. You've written at The Horseman and Fair World for over 20 years. What did you learn in your time covering the sport? I learned this early on from all the horsemen in Michigan and it's carried through to my time at The Horseman and talking to some of the biggest names in the sport, that virtually everybody loves what they do and care not only for the horses, but also for their peers. People step up for others who may be in need. The decision to cease operations at The Horseman and Fair World came within hours of when you were asked to do this interview. Did you ever consider passing on it? Yes. Only because I didn't want it to appear you were doing this out of the goodness of your heart and feeling sorry for me. We both knew it was in the works though. If you remember, when you first sent the questions I told you that you'd probably have a few more by the end of the week. Now you know the reason. I know you would have understood had I passed, but I told you that I'd do it and I wanted to honor my word. What will you miss most about your time at The Horseman and Fair World? Working with people you like is a bonus and I had that with Kathy Parker, advertising director Lynne Myers and production manager Heather Kemper. It was a small staff but it worked to put together a stellar magazine as well as the weekly HarnessRacing Weekend Preview, which was like a weekly magazine in itself, and the website. And making it all work this past year with pandemic and people working from home, that shows how dedicated everybody was to put out a great product. I also already miss talking to people for stories. It's been strange not looking at program pages to find stories. I'm sure I will get rejuvenated at some point. It'll take some time. I think though that the sport will miss The Horseman and Fair World even more. It's been around long before any of our lifetimes and people have continued to tell me that they grew up a reader and that their parents were readers and their grandparents were readers. What response have you heard since the news got out about the company's fate? It was overwhelming. To have some of the biggest names in the sport take the time to call, that means so much to me. One of the first texts I received was from a trainer who I did a story with a couple months ago, but have never met. Texts like that also mean the world to me. And people I've never met reaching out to tell me they've been a loyal reader through all these years. What was your favorite moment covering harness racing? There's so many great racing moments I don't think I can single out just one. But to me the greatest moment was when we were able to sneak Foiled Again into the hotel in Orlando and surprise more than 300 people when he came out to accept his Bergstein/Proximity Award. To have only a handful of people involved and to be able to pull that off without the secret being blown, I still get goosebumps thinking about it. I thought it would be a nice moment, but I never expected it to be such a huge thing and I'm thankful to caretaker Devan Miller for all her help in sneaking the horse in to where we needed him to be, and trainer Ron Burke and co-owner Mark Weaver for their help. They didn't tell their wives what we had in store for them, that's how much they wanted to make it a special moment. Which is your favorite horse from your time in the sport? Niatross. In later years it certainly was Foiled Again as well as Wiggle It Jiggleit. What is the best advice you've gotten about harness racing? Here's an answer you probably aren't expecting: When I first started at Hazel Park in 1979, one of the first days I was there I was invited to go to lunch with general manager Harold Duris, comptroller Barbara Seel, and a couple others. Everybody ordered cocktails and I declined, saying I wasn't an afternoon drinker and I had to be back in the office. Barbara then said to me, "Order a drink. If you're going to be in this business you're going to have to learn to drink in the afternoon." Boy, was she right! If you had just one interview left in harness racing, who would it be with and why? That's a tough question. I do know that when I got word that The Horseman was closing down after the Jan. 28 HarnessRacing Weekend Preview email newsletter was sent, I told Kathy Parker that I still wanted to do one final race story with Yannick Gingras. If I had to bet, I'd say that I called Yannick more than anybody over the years and he ALWAYS answered or called back. So he was the one who I wanted to do that final story with, although he didn't know the reason at the time. You're a former President and a very active member of the United States Harness Writers Association. How much of your free time each year do you donate to USHWA? Let's just say that if I received an hourly wage for all that time, I wouldn't have needed any other job. Just kidding. I don't know the answer to that because it seems USHWA things are always coming up, and I like being involved. You mention above your role in getting Foiled Again to the Dan Patch banquet in 2019. If we can't bring the people to the horses, is it feasible to bring the horses to the people to increase the sport's exposure? That was a great moment. My only disappointment in that whole night was that despite getting help from the hotel's PR person, we couldn't get any local press to come out. To them I guess it was just a horse walking into a banquet room. I think they missed something very special, just seeing all the people who converged on Foiled Again as he stood like the champion he is for several minutes. I guarantee you he knew exactly what was happening, and I wish he could have given his own speech. What was the moment like when you found out about your election to the Communicators wing of the Hall of Fame? I was so thankful and overwhelmed. I had just missed going on the ballot the year before as a result of a tiebreaking vote that I came up on the short end, so I was hopeful that I wouldn't have to relive that disappointment again. But my initial disappointment wasn't for me, but for my mother, who was in failing health and I wanted her to still be here when that moment came when I was elected. While her health precluded her from going to Goshen for the induction dinner, it meant the world that I was able to tell her the news. My brother didn't attend because he stayed with her and they were able to watch the ceremony online. Perhaps your most popular column over the years is "Backstretch with Gordon" during the Red Mile's Grand Circuit meet. Why do you think it is so well received? You got me. When "Boss Kathy" came up with the idea in 2003 for me to roam the backstretch and write about my travels, I never expected such positive response. My one fear was that when I went out at night and horsemen saw me, that they'd stay away for fear I'd give away some secrets. That never happened as everybody seems to love getting a mention. As I said in my Hall of Fame induction speech, the one thing I had to learn early on was to not spend so much time with Nick Salvi as those escapades could usually never be chronicled. You always mention gas prices in the column. Do you have an obsession with gas? Not even close. That started years ago when gas prices started to hit the roof. I can't even remember how it started except for noting once how much cheaper gas was at one of the stations near The Red Mile. I thought about retiring the prices last year, especially with fewer people in town due to the pandemic, but when I asked people their thoughts they told me no way, to leave the prices in. Is there a track or race that you haven't covered that remains on your bucket list? The Elitlopp in Sweden and Prix d'Amerique in France. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? Uniform rules across the continent so everybody is on the same page. That's been noted ad nauseum by a lot of people over the years, so hopefully someday something can happen. How do you view the future of harness racing? This might not be the best question for me to answer right now. Forget the sadness that I feel and Kathy, Lynne Myers, Heather Kemper and Vanessa Flannery feel about no longer having their jobs, it's sad for all those who worked in those offices for more than a century. And sad for the sport as it's the demise of an iconic publication. Time for the stretch drive: Best Horse You Ever Saw?: Niatross Best Driver Ever?: John Campbell Best Trainer Ever?: Jimmy Takter Favorite TV Show?: Survivor and General Hospital are 1 and 1A Trotters or Pacers?: Nothing better than an absolutely flawless, great trotter.