Harness: Profile of trainer Bob Lounsbury

What kind of car do you drive?

2018 Dodge Ram Pickup.

Favorite dinner meal? Snack?

Steak; Cashews.

What is your favorite track to race at?

Probably Pocono. They have very competitive racing and are friendly to the horsemen. The politics aren’t as bad there.

What is your favorite big event in racing?

Hambletonian – I’ve always been partial to trotters.

How often is racing on your mind?

Too much. I’m a land surveyor on the side. I draw maps and I write deeds. That’s my real business. I’ve been doing it since 1971. At some point in the day I have to turn the switch off from racing, usually when I get done jogging in the morning. So I have to turn it off when I’m out in the field working and drawing maps, but as soon as I lay down to go to sleep I start thinking about the horses and what classes to enter and such. It really never leaves your mind.

What is your favorite thing to do outside of racing?

Visit any Sandals. They are all top shelf. I had a trip scheduled for the 1st to the Bahamas and Nassau but they just called me to say it is cancelled.

What is your favorite sport to watch?

Horse Racing.

What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don’t know?

I’m a Vietnam Vet. I spent two years in the Marines in 1969 and 1970.

What is one word that describes harness racing for you?

Tough.

How did you get started in the sport?

I was doing Surveying and my health insurance was going through the roof, it was in the early 1980s and jumping over $6,000 or $7,000 a year. I’ve been going to Monticello Raceway for a long time, most of my life. A couple of trainer friends of mine told me that if you race two horses a month in the winter and four horses a month in the winter, [horsemen’s association] would pick up my health insurance. So I figured getting a horse was worth $7,000 to me already. My first horse was a trotter. I think he won two or three races in a row to start and that hooked me pretty quickly.

What made you get into training?

Basically because I didn’t like the work ethic of most of the trainers. I was a Marine and I believe in hard work. I’m going all the time. I thought, hey I can do what these guys do. It can’t be that tough. It is a tough business, though, because nobody, particularly trainers, they aren’t going to tell you how to do things. They don’t want you taking money out of their mouths. For two or three years it was just self-educating. I picked up a little here and there, but it was mostly a school of hard-knocks. Ultimately it is like most things, if you put your mind to it and work hard, you are going to be a success no matter what.

What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten about harness racing?

It has to do with mares. I’m not a big mare person but I get along with them good. Some Canadian guy who trained a few horses with me when I first started out, he barely spoke any English, but he said, ‘If you are going to kill a woman, you kill her with kindness. No matter how nasty they get, just say sweetheart, I love you and treat her kinder.’ Mares and fillies are no different. You can be harsher with colts and they will be better for it, but a mare or filly will remember it and hold it against you. From that point whenever a mare or filly would do something, I would just scratch my head, pet them, and move on.

What was your favorite moment in harness racing?

Winning the Zweig Memorial the last year in was at Syracuse with Make It Real. He was the only son of Mack Lobell at the time that was still a colt. Gary Messenger drove for me and John Campbell was sitting on the bench. Someone came up to me and asked why I was using Gary when John was sitting right there and I told them that Gary is better looking. The horse paid $85 when he won.

We were negotiating a big price for him at one time. His other owner was giving me a hard time about wanting to sell and in the middle of our battle a mosquito bit him and he got West Nile and died. So we got nothing for him when we were looking at about $400,000.

Which is the best horse you’ve ever trained?

With mares it is Truth And Liberty. I had her two times and the owners were interesting. She was a typical mare, over-rigged, shadow roll, head poles. They sent her to me to see if I could turn her around. So I stripped her of everything. The second time I had her, I took her to Saratoga, she won a bunch in a row in the Open and the owners got mad at me for racing her there for $20,000 instead of at Yonkers for $44,000. So we parted company. She was the best mare I ever had.

There was another horse I liked a lot better and he was a slug to most people. His name is That’s My Opinion. He was a well-bred Somebeachsomewhere that never seemed to go for anybody. When I got him he was in a NW3000 sometime in March and the horse had $700 after three months of racing at The Meadowlands. He was with Nick Surick, Vinnie Fusco, Tony Alagna, and everybody hated him. The day Barry Franklin gave him to me, he said do whatever you want with him. So I put him in a $10,000 claimer and he called me and said, ‘Do you know how much I have in that horse?’ I told him I’m not even sure he could beat the 10-claimers. We had an outside post the first start at The Meadowlands and I put one of the better drivers down and he picked off, so I put (Jim) Taggart down since he is one of the Monticello regulars. Taggart got his first-ever win at The Meadowlands that night and the horse looked good pacing in like (1:)53. The horse just kind of took off from there. I had him in the $50,000 and $75,000 claimers at Yonkers. He would just come first up every week and grind them down. He was probably my favorite horse. He got claimed from me for $50,000. I’ve had him again since then but he got claimed from me a few times last year and that was the end of that.

You didn’t start training full-time until the early 2000’s. Are you surprised that you have over 1,700 wins over that period?

Not really. We work at it really hard. I had six stents put in my heart in 2017. Up until then I was jogging 15 horses a day, 5 miles each, every day. From there I would go to race or work as a Surveyor. You can ask anybody that knows me, if you want to find me I’m out on the track. With the amount of hours I put in, you are supposed to win races.

Coronavirus has almost completely wiped harness racing in North America off the map. How has it affected your barn so far?

It has decimated it and everybody around us.

How long can you survive without racing?

I’m in a different position than some others because I’m a Land Surveyor too, but they are making it really hard on us. My wife is a Real Estate agent and they just stopped her from showing houses. The government center where I do my research and the place where I make my copies, they’re all closed. It is making it really difficult for me to do my work, and when things get difficult there I supplement it with Harness Racing. After the crash in 2008, I was glad I had Harness Racing because I was doing just 30 surveys a year instead of 200.

What about your fellow trainers, or drivers and caretakers at Monticello? How are they handling the racing shutdown?

I’m afraid to see what is going to happen. Between the Coronavirus and the indictments, there is a lot of shakeup in the business. If you look at the trainers that were indicted, the Allards and Bancas, they race a lot of horses. It will be nice that someone else can take down some of that money, but how are you going to fill those races with all of those horses potentially out. With the virus, these guys that have $3,000 claimers, it is hard to make enough to feed them day to day, and now they are going to have to just hold these horses without racing for potentially two months? It’s going to be impossible. I think the Resorts World casino just gave the horsemen $60,000 this week. They bought some hay and bags of feed and are distributing it to the neediest of the horsemen. I think they are going to send some money to the guys who have made a certain number of starts in recent months. It will be enough to carry them a little while. We have no idea how bad this is going to get.

You train mostly low to mid-level horses. What are the owners saying? Are they panicking?

Surprisingly no. I have pretty good owners and they are used to adversity. I’ve educated them well. They’ve all been in it a long time and are used to it (ups and downs). They know how to weather the storm.

Monticello is down to just seven races on some days as other tracks open. As a regular on that circuit, do you see it surviving?

I think some things will happen after the Coronavirus passes, if they haven’t ‘Amished’ all of their horses. It is my feeling that when the Yonkers contract runs out, they might be faced with the reality that the MGM people want to build a hotel there. We floated an idea that the Yonkers guys could come to Monticello and race their card at night while we race during the day. If the powers that be up here could knock down the grandstand and build something more modern, useful and fan-friendly with a good simulcast room, I think it would be good for them and us.

If they think a five-eighths mile track is better, then let’s build one. We have a 240 acre site, there is great access in and out, it’s zoned for it, and it is an easy site to make useful for everyone.

If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be?

Probably the hierarchy, the relationship between management and horse people. I’d try to bring them more together rather than battle each other. I think people naturally like horses, but I think you have to promote it. It shouldn’t be that hard of a sell. I’m a horsemen and I do a lot of stuff for management too, but there is a bridge between them that just doesn’t work.

How do you view the future of harness racing?

You see these young people with their phones and everybody has their faces buried in them. Nobody is talking to people; nobody looks up. People have lost themselves as far as communication. People have lost their way when it comes to getting out to nature and seeing things. I think our sport will be a hard sell because the people have changed. I think if we threw all of the cell phones in a pile and burned them, we’d probably be better off for it. But that’s not possible. The genie is out of the bottle.

Time for the stretch drive...

Best Horse Ever: Mack Lobell

Best Driver Ever: John Campbell. He was more than a driver. He was good for the game and had a great personality.

Lasix – Yes or No?: Yes

Best place to eat near Monticello?: Piccolo Paese in Liberty, NY

Favorite TV Show?: Banshee on Cinemax