Whether you know Gabe Prewitt personally or just from watching him on a simulcast signal, it is clear he loves harness racing. The now 41-year-old was first exposed to the sport in his late teen years and has made what could ultimately turn out to be a Hall of Fame career as one of the most well-rounded people in the sport. I’m going to keep the preamble short because if you do know Gabe, he can talk! And talk he did, about people who have touched him in the sport, his journey from Kentucky to Pompano to Hoosier, wagering, and much more. Normally I say “grab a cup of coffee and enjoy” but today, make it a thermos or a venti at Starbucks to get you through what it likely the longest Q&A since I started in 2017. Trust me, you’ll enjoy this one. I know I did. How did you get started in harness racing? I moved too close to The Red Mile when I went to college at the University of Kentucky [laughing]. I’d never seen a harness race. I loved Keeneland and went there all the time, and I love gambling, which will come as no shock. I moved directly across from the stable gate at The Red Mile when I came to college in 2001. I had a buddy ask if I wanted to bet the horses at The Red Mile. He said they had the carts behind the horses but we could still gamble on them. I said, that sounds good to me. After that I never left. I know you started as a mutuel clerk, when did it become clear that you would move forward in the industry? That would be much later. I started as a mutuel clerk probably two to three months after my first experience at The Red Mile. I always enjoyed racing but didn’t know if I’d have a career in it. I had no family experience in it and I wasn’t thinking along those lines. I was selling ads at the Thoroughbred Times and then I became the Director of the Kentucky Harness Association in 2010. That was really the first time I looked at a full-time job in the business. Before that I just thought it was really cool and enjoyed going to the races. Are you surprised with the career you’ve made for yourself in the industry? Yes. The route that I’ve taken is not one I ever could’ve predicted. I have been very fortunate that a lot of people have given me great opportunities and I’ve had a lot of great mentors that have helped me along the way. Every opportunity I’ve gotten has come as a little bit of a surprise, but it has been because of really good people who have been kind enough to pave the way for me. Speaking of great people in the industry, you’ve worked closely with the late Hall of Famers Sam McKee and Dave Brower during your career. What did you learn from them? Everything. Out of pure accident I started to announce the races at The Red Mile when they got a little desperate. At the start it was just two or three races a night to fill in. Sam was always so kind with his time and demeanor. When I first started I was beyond awful. Sam would take the time to call me and really almost coach me, and more importantly build me up. I already knew I was terrible and he made me feel like I had a future in this line of work. He would tell me how good I was, that I would get better and better, that my voice was great and that I only needed to work on the logistics of calling the race. Sam was so good in that regard and quite frankly I never took a job in the industry after that without his consultation. That even includes when I took the job as the Director of Racing at Pompano. I was the announcer and did some things but he was sort of the rock for me as someone to talk to and bounce everything off of. He was really a great friend. I can remember when I got to Buffalo in 2012, I think it snowed a foot my first week and I didn’t know anybody in town. We started in January and the weather was just brutal and I couldn’t even drive my car. I called Sam and said ‘I don’t think I can do this. I’m going to have to tell them to find someone else and I’m going to have to go home.’ He obviously said ‘Gabe, you can’t do that. You committed to these people.’ He was 100 percent right and I probably would’ve stayed there forever if Pompano didn’t come to call. Sam was always a voice of reason for me. I have a quick trigger at times and Sam was a little different style. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be in this business without Sam. Dave was like a brother to me. I knew him from when I started going to the track every night in college. The Meadowlands was the signal I played, so I knew him from that. We got to be close. When I went to The Meadowlands to travel, it was like I was going to hang out with a buddy for a few days. We would do lunch and grab drinks after the races. He lived vicariously through my gambling [laughing] and was sweating all my action. I had to listen to an endless stream of bad beat stories. He was just a true friend. We started back at The Meadowlands at the same time, unfortunately after we lost Sam. They brought Dave back and that was the same Championship meet I started going to every weekend. We always had that as a little bit of a bond. He made me feel so comfortable. If everything didn’t fall into place, what would you have done with your life? What is your degree in? Business Management. I actually started out of college as an assistant manager at a grocery chain called Kroger. I don’t know where I would’ve gone. I don’t think I would’ve done that for too long. I really don’t know what I would’ve done. I’m Kentucky through and through so I’m sure I would’ve done something at home. In terms of tracks, let’s start with your great love of Pompano Park. What made Pompano special for you? It’s funny, I got the job because of Sam McKee. They were really adamant to hire him. Jeff [Gural] had just taken over at The Meadowlands and Sam was doing a bunch of different things with sponsorships and other stuff he hadn’t done in the past; he wouldn’t have minded a change. At the 23rd hour, his daughters were still in college, he withdrew his name after they really put the full court press on him to get him to come. He recommended me and John Yinger, who was the boss at Pompano at the time, said if Sam recommends you that’s good enough for me. I’m an amateur poker player. I can’t say professional because I think you have to make a profit to qualify. I had been to south Florida a handful of times with friends on poker vacations and I always planned it around being close to Pompano, because being the degenerate that I am, I wanted to watch the races. I was always intrigued by the place. Part of the reason Sam was slowed down by the opportunity was the uncertainty of the track’s future. I was a single guy in my late 20s and I didn’t care; I’ll have fun, stay warm and play a lot of poker. That was how it started. After I got there, Pompano educated me. I don’t think I saved Pompano as much as it saved me. I was very fortunate through multiple management and ownership changes, somehow I was one of the only guys to stick around. There were three ownership changes and at least three Directors of Racing over a nine year period. Twice I had that role. Once I laid eyes on the track and got the lay of the land, I realized there weren’t getting much action, maybe $70 to $80 grand a card despite little competition. The thought that hit me was we should be doing much better and quite frankly it was embarrassing. Through conversations and different relationships with the leadership, they allowed me to fix it as long as it didn’t cost them any money. That meant changing post times, the days of the week they raced and you name it. A lot of things we tried didn’t work but there was never any pressure. I just wanted to succeed. At some point it developed into more of a passion project and eventually into a rallying cry to stay open. We were like the movie Major League. The ownership didn’t really want us to win and we kept winning in spite of them. I think everyone took a lot of pride in it. I never got any feedback about racing too late or anything. Everyone was just interested in how we did each night. Everyone bought into that we wanted to have some pride and wanted to kick some ass. That was the unique thing about Pompano. It was a very selfless situation. Just by the little bit of success we had we bought the place two or three more years than it would’ve had. While you’ve been at least the part time announcer at The Red Mile since 2007, in 2023 you took a position there as VP of Racing and Sports. Why did you leave in 2025? I love The Red Mile. It is literally in a dead heat with Pompano as my favorite facility. It is home to me and it was an extremely difficult decision, one that I marinated on for what any party involved would tell you was far too long [laughing]. At the end of the day, Joe Morris is a guy that has always had my back. He hired me at the Thoroughbred Times way back when I was 20 years old and he had my back at Pompano and was instrumental in getting us a final year. Hoosier is a cool track and I always thought it had a lot of opportunity. Having said that, Joe Morris is the reason I took the job. I try to be loyal to people who have always been loyal to me, not saying that anyone at The Red Mile hasn’t been loyal, but Joe is a guy that has always had my back and is a guy I really trust. Will you still be calling the Grand Circuit races at The Red Mile? Yes. I could not compute in my head being away from that track. I love it too much and all my friends are there. As I was debating the decision [of whether to leave] I carried that plan to both sides. I’m going to come down and call Sundays and Mondays and I’ll probably split the Grand Circuit meet with Steve Cross, but that is still up in the air. I’ll for sure be there week two of the Grand Circuit and week one we’ll see. You are now Vice President and GM at Harrah’s Hoosier Park. How is it going so far? We were in a little bit of emergency mode when I first got here. The horse population was very tricky. We were having likely the worst cards in the history of Hoosier Park unfortunately due to a lot of factors. Since, things have gotten a lot better. It is a lot more fun when you can put out a great product; it is a lot easier to market. For instance, on [May 14] we nearly bowled a perfect game with 13 10-horse fields and one with nine. That’s pretty good and a long way from where we were. We are going against the winds of the business, which is down pretty drastically this year. We are up [in handle] with fewer races and far fewer horses. For the first 20 days we were down 220 horses here. That’s like a horse per race on any night. How much is handle up in 2025 with you at the helm? I believe about 15% at the moment. We’ve been up every single week except one and that was when we had a drastic shortage on races and horses. Anywhere I’m at the way I look at things is we need to win and a win is being up over last year. We did that at Pompano for many years. If you win five, six or seven years in a row, that is a pretty good number. We just have to continue to climb and beat each previous year. What do you attribute the increase to in an environment where most tracks are way down? Luck, I guess? We changed the way we do business. I’m a little of a maniac when it comes to post times. That is one thing I don’t like to give up control over. I like to be the guy that radios the starter when to start and hangs the post times so I can slot us in the best place. It is sort of what I enjoy to do and I think it is the most important job at any track if your metric is handle. I think post time management has helped us out to a certain degree. We changed the betting menu and lowered the takeout. Last week we had our biggest Pick 4 pool of the season at $22,500. I think that is awesome. When we lower takeout it isn’t like turning on a water faucet, it is a slow build, which we saw at Pompano as well. One thing we haven’t benefitted from is that we haven’t had many carryovers. Hoosier has always been known for competitive racing and big fields, but we haven’t had many carryovers and last year they had plenty of them. So I think bigger and better things are on the horizon when we start to see bigger fields and carryovers. The one tricky part is that we are legislated to race 160 days and it can put you up against it trying to get those in from March to November. We are looking at things in the future. Am I better off spreading it out a little bit and trying to extend the calendar and going into Pomp territory [December] when handle is much better too? I know it is a bit colder here in December than south Florida but we are looking into it. This is a bit of a different footprint for me because we open and my competition steadily grows. More tracks open as the spring and summer months crank up. At Pompano I was used to opening when there was a little more traffic and the competition would decline. With my first go-around here, I’ve been a little careful with guarantees because I keep looking at the calendar and seeing track after track opening. I’ve tried to not be overly reactive to the success because there are always new tracks coming up on the radar. I’m sure you saw that The Meadowlands reversed course on its post time drag. Can a track survive without sitting on zero minutes to post for an extended period of time? God bless them. I applaud them for trying. We all hate the drag; it is ludicrous. Sometimes I get blamed and people think I love the drag. I do not. It is completely false. However, as The Meadowlands just displayed to us in real time, it is impossible to be the only track that follows the rules. If every other harness track has a drag, you can’t be the only one trying to do the right thing. It has to be all of us or none of us to avoid a failed mission. The one advantage that The Meadowlands or even The Red Mile has is private ownership, so if Jeff [Gural] decides he wants to do something he can. If I did that at a corporate level they’d probably be looking for my replacement in a week. As stupid as drag is, in this environment it works and it won’t change unless we do something that isn’t very common in horse racing and that is cooperate. What is your favorite big event in racing? Why? I’ve been so fortunate to have opportunities to go to these big events, and I went to almost all of them before event working them. Hambletonian Day is obviously awesome and it has its own element. I see people I maybe only get to see once a year. I love the Adios. That is an incredible event that is very local with Pittsburgh and the community getting behind the race. It is always a huge crowd. I love going there. The Jug is incomparable. It is sort of the mecca. If there are a couple of days to go to every year it is that week. Being a homer I also love the Kentucky Futurity. It is a cool day and many times it turns out to be one of the best cards in the entire sport and in my opinion on the best racetrack in the sport. Those are the ones that stand out, but it doesn’t take much to pump me up. I was hyped for a Tuesday card at Pompano. What is your favorite thing to do outside of harness racing? Hang out with family and friends. I try to do things to wind down. I’m sort of a high-gear person. I’m constantly looking for ways to relax. My mind is constantly rolling, particularly on what we can do better from a racetrack standpoint or if I’m not at the track what I’m doing watching racing. I’m also a big Kentucky sports guy. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Fun – that is what it should be and what we are trying to bring here. It is not supposed to be a miserable, complain about everything deal. We want it to be fun for everybody – those that are racing, those that are gambling, those that are just coming out to the track. That is my goal going back to when I first came to the track. It was fun. What was your best moment in harness racing? Being the sicko that I am, I want to say when we broke handle records at Pompano. Financially it is probably when I got to call my horse Mt Sterling Mafia winning a $175,000 Sire Stakes final at Lexington. You are one of the faces of harness racing on the Fox Sports broadcasts and you’ve immediately expanded Hoosier’s presence to be part of a show on May 17 when you have mostly overnights. Should the sport being doing more nationally? Yes, 1000 percent. It is ludicrous that the national TV doesn’t get more support. This is one of our only shots to get in front of a new audience. We don’t get many of those chances. And we get to work with an absolutely first class team and staff who do this on a regular basis with Thoroughbreds and do a fantastic job. We are very fortunate that they are willing to include us as part of that. I think that even with dollars and support, we have to come together as an industry. No offense to anyone, but look at some of the money they divided up with the USTA broadcast fund, there is no better place to put this money and to be giving a pebble to something like this which is so vitally important while directing the money to some things that are going to have 100 or 200 viewers. No disrespect to anyone but we have literally one shot to get in front of a new audience. Some of these nights, even when I’m on the broadcast, we really try to simplify things and give people cool storylines to make thigs interesting. It is not like doing the show at The Meadowlands where I’m in pure degenerate mode talking to pure hardcore gamblers. On national TV we are trying to develop interesting storylines and explain things. We’ve gotten lots of nice feedback. I see how it is working and it is discouraging sometimes that we don’t have more support. For a broadcast fund, this should be the number one priority by the length of the stretch. We are still very fortunate that guys like Jeff Gural, Joe Morris here at Caesars and others are supportive of it but I think as an industry we really need to get behind it. Do you plan to continue to do more shows with Hoosier? I’d love to be on any time we can. Those guys know that and we have a good relationship. Any time that we can come on we’d love to be anyone’s dance partner, so to speak, if they have a big night. You’re going to hate this question, but with dual qualifications as both a broadcaster and executive, couldn’t you one day be one of the elite in both the Communicators and main Hall of Fame? Those types of things don’t cross my mind. I’m worried about the draw we are doing for Friday right now and hoping we get 14 races. I live in the moment, which sometimes can be good or bad. However that ends, we’ll see. When you are on the air or online, you never try to hide that you are gambling along with the people out there. Why do you think others try to hide it? I just think that it makes you more relatable. Right or wrong, I lay my cards on the table. Sometimes on air I will comment on whether it is a good night or a bad night. I just think that gambling fuels this game and the fact that it is frowned upon or people are hiding it, I just take a different approach. I think we need people to know that it is cool. We’ve all had good nights and we’ve all been buried. Those of us that play the races have faced everything you can come up with. When you are watching a broadcast it is very easy to decipher who is buried in the weeds with you and in action based on comments and those that aren’t. I just think people can relate to someone who seems more like themselves. One of your claims to fame is the #Senditin network. Looking back, are you surprised how your following through that message has grown? That would be a complete shock. The way that was even coined was a one-off tweet one night at Pompano. We really had a lot of online support for it and I think online is really important. When I came to the sport in college, there were no ADWs or phone apps, you bet on track. I had people to talk to, educate me, discuss bad beats and communicate with. You felt some comradery. In this era the handle hasn’t altered that much but it is really where it is coming from. People sit at home and watch all the races. A lot of the comradery is gone from the brick and mortar facilities, and it is unfortunate because it is what got guys like me hooked, being able to hang out and chat at the track. So I think online allows us that opportunity. We’ve had a lot of buy-in and support on the hashtag and it’s been a lot of fun. I think we’ve reignited some of the fun with the #Senditin army for the nighttime signal at Hoosier. You also own and breed horses. How many horses do you have now? I’ve got three in training, two racehorses with the Schillaci’s at Northfield. I have one 2-year-old with them as well. I’ve had some yearlings with Brian Brown over the years as well. I have a couple of broodmares at my father’s farm just outside of Lexington that are semi-retired. A total of about 10 but only three that are earning income. If you could only do one thing in harness racing – announcing, track management, gambler, owner, breeder, pedigree reader, broadcaster – which would you choose? Hang post times and not even be on-air. It is like a poker game every night. It is a results-oriented thing. You can see what you did well or what you messed up race by race. I just really enjoy it. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? The thing that comes to mind and for a million reasons this is impossible, but I would want to make us the greatest gambling game in the world. When I say that I mean lower the takeout and market it. Again, for a million reasons it can’t happen. I lowered the takeout to 12 percent and got assassinated by a couple of people saying I was cutting their margins. That is the unfortunate thing that people don’t see behind the curtains in our game, how many different entities are at play and you have to satisfy. You have to thread the needle. If I had the magic wand I would make it five to 10 percent takeout across the board. It would be cool and fun to market. Your horse racing utopia would require starting from scratch, no? You do because the model we are in is too tough. I have guys here at the track every night who are good shooters and I’ve gotten to know very well at Hoosier and they play on their phones right in my grandstand. It is a tricky environment and no one could’ve seen back then the way the landscape was going to change to the degree it has, with mobile wagering, etc. Unfortunately I don’t know there is a way out. How do you view the future of harness racing? The Midwest is extremely strong. Kentucky is in orbit. Ohio is also in orbit. Indiana remains very strong. We hope that something breaks in our favor at other facilities. The Meadowlands needs a casino. If they get a casino they’ll be the mecca, five nights a week, huge purses and full fields like The Meadowlands we remember. No one is rooting harder for that than me. The unfortunate thing with harness racing, just by pure bad luck, the jurisdictions that were always strong from the perspective that I like, gambling handle, they never really got support. The Meadowlands has been decimated by all the states around them, tracks who just don’t care as much about the handle and just take the horse population and leave them struggling. Even Chicago, when I first started I was an absolute animal playing Balmoral and Maywood. If they had gotten casino relief back in the day, God only knows were that product would be now. Just by sheer odd luck we’ve gotten casino subsidies in states that don’t seem to be doing as well in the marketplace. Time for the stretch drive… Best Horse you ever saw: Somebeachsomewhere. Favorite TV Show: I don’t watch a lot of TV. Shameless was a show I got caught up in for a time. Trotters or Pacers: Give me a full field and I’ll take either.