What kind of car do you drive? 2017 Lincoln MKX. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? Rib eye with lobster tails, potatoes, veggies, a Caesars salad and a red Cabernet Sauvignon. I try to eat healthy so my snacks are usually nuts or pork rinds; something low in carbs. If I go outside that it is cookies or chips. What is your favorite track to race at? Why? It is hard for me to choose anything but Mohawk Park. It is home for me and everything is so convenient. The configuration of the track is second-to-none. It can be speed favoring, depending on the wind, but it can also be favorable for horses coming from behind because of the sweeping last turn. My second favorite would be The Meadowlands. I just like bigger tracks. What is your favorite big event in racing? The Little Brown Jug. I started to go just after I was married with my father-in-law (Bill Dawson). We went from about 2001 to 2010 every year until my daughter was born. Then I decided to take a little break and I haven't been back since. I actually had a horse Moneyman Hill race in it last year but I couldn't go due to COVID. It sucks that I was able to race in it without getting the full experience, but it just means I'll work even harder to make it back again. How often is racing on your mind? 24/7 unless I'm eating, playing golf or hockey. When you have a stable this size, you are constantly going over every horse and trying to figure out what you can do to fix them. So many things race through your head. What is your favorite thing to do outside of racing? If it isn't involving family then golf. I played since I was 13 or 14 and participated on the University level at the University of Toronto. Golf got put on the backburner the last 20 years. With COVID there was nothing else to do, so I got a golf membership with some of my buddies and played probably more last year than the last 20 years. It has always been a passion of mine. With family, I'm a goalie and so is my 7-year-old son, so I love going to practices with him and games. I also love to watch my daughter dance. She's a competitive dancer. Between the two of them it keeps us busy. What is your favorite sport to watch? Team? I'm a gambler, so I enjoy any sport if I have money on it. I love watching football. In football I don't have a team since there is none in Toronto, but I like to watch it and play Draft Kings fantasy sports. I'm a big Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Blue Jays fan. Hockey, to watch live especially, is the most fun. I usually go to about 10 games a year to watch the Leafs play. What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don't know? I have a diploma in marketing and sales. My parents always told me not to be a horse trainer and to go to school and get my education. I decided to get the education but still be a horse trainer. It helps with the day-to-day running of the business and with marketing/promoting myself. Overall it was definitely beneficial. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Blood. Once this sport is in your blood and you can't get rid of it. I've brought many new people to the races to watch live and some will never come again, but the others come once and they are hooked. Once you are in it, it is usually for life. How did you get started in the sport? My dad Rocco Auciello. He stills works with me every day. We are 50/50 partners on Auciello stables. He's been doing it full-time since the late 1980s. I went to the barn every weekend but I still went to school, played hockey, baseball and golf. I wasn't fully immersed in it but I grew up into it. When I was 22, after I got my college degree, I decided to do it full-time. The reason I got involved, my dad's stable started to grow and I was in a job that I didn't enjoy after college. I figured I might as well give it a shot now and see if I liked it rather than regret never trying later. I took a shot. It took a lot of years but it has started to pay off the last seven or eight years. What is the best advice you've ever gotten about harness racing? Take care of your owners and clients. There are really two different kinds of trainers. There are those that think the best owners are themselves, but that is totally not true. Without owners and investors, people that can fill our barn with nice horses, a trainer is nobody. I treat all of the horses like they are my own and treat people how I would like to be treated. I have a little money and I could invest in horses, but without owners I wouldn't be anywhere. It is not about finding rich people. It is about finding good owners and treating them fairly so you can have a good relationship for the long run. What was your favorite moment in harness racing? Probably this summer when Moneyman Hill finished third in the North America Cup. Only the owners of the horses were there, so it wasn't the regular atmosphere, but just to be involved in the elimination race and make the final was great. Halfway down the stretch it looked like we had a shot, he got within a length-and-a-half of Tall Dark Stranger and nobody ever gets by him. He was a really good third. We had just bought the horse a month prior on OnGait, so it was a big thrill. Which is the best horse you've ever trained? It is so hard for me to decide because every two to three years there seems to be a special horse come along. I'd say most recently Physicallyinclined. He's on the shelf right now, but he's made almost a million dollars, not all for us, but he had three really good years for us. There is something about his presence and he's still a stud and he bred a few mares. When you look at him, the way he carries himself, he looks like a special horse. He's probably not the fastest and richest I've ever trained, but overall I think he is probably the best. I haven't had a Grand Circuit champion or World champion yet. Mine are mostly older campaigners that we bought at 3, 4 or 5 years old or claimed as overnight horses. Do you dream of having that Grand Circuit horse? I do. Every year we buy seven or eight yearlings and I have three or four of my own homebreds. We start with maybe 15 yearlings every year, but we don't go to the sales and spend $300,000 on a yearling. We are buying them more in the $20,000, $30,000 or $50,000 range. Can you hit a home run with those? Definitely. But I think your odds are better when you can afford the Tall Dark Stranger types. If I had an investor that came to me and said they wanted the best you can buy and money was no object, I would be in there doing the same thing. I definitely have those dreams, but I have a lot of nice horses in the barn and if I never get a World champion I'm not going to be disappointed. We've accomplished a lot of things over the last few years and we are having fun. I love my job and I love my life. What's the one race that you most want to win in your career? Little Brown Jug. Just being there with those 50,000 people. The whole experience is second to none. On the trotting side, the Hambletonian. You also have 22 driving wins, why did you stop about 10 years ago? I got heavy. I'm not a moose by any means, but when I started driving I was 180 pounds and now I'm 220. That's not an ideal weight for a driver. For the most part I wasn't really good. I was better from the couch than the race bike. When you get this many horses and you are this busy it is very tough to do both. You have to focus on one. Plus it was pretty evident that I was never going to be a top driver. How many horses are you training? Right now I train from three locations. I have 45 at my main stable in Port Perry, Ontario. I have a second stable that has 28, mostly 2-year-olds training down and 3-year-olds coming back. My New York barn has a dozen. We had more down there but with Ontario opening up a lot have come back up. You compete regularly on both sides of the Canadian/U.S. border. Why did you decide to play the field in multiple regions? It all happened about eight years ago. I had no room left at home and people wanted to give me horses. I also had a couple of nice trotters that weren't getting in at Mohawk because the class wouldn't fill. One of my clients Denarben Stables, between the pair of us we had a few nice horses, he said, why don't we try them at Yonkers and put them in the Open and see what happens. I set up my stable down there with five horses and the late Daryl Mccannell who just passed away last fall went down with me and ran it. It hasn't been overly successful but it kept my foot in the door down there and it was a good move. It is nice to have that as an option for myself and my clients who want to race in the U.S. or buy a New York or New Jersey bred. How often do you travel back and forth? I used to go once per month before COVID hit, but I haven't been there since the pandemic started. I'm just trying to be cautious and follow the rules. The pandemic-related lockdown caused many Canadian trainers to send horses to the U.S. in 2021. Did your presence in both locations make it easier? It definitely made it easier for me. I didn't lose too many horses. About twenty-five left my barn up here. I sent 16-17 down to myself in New York, but a few owners wanted to sell and a few sent horses to Ohio. It hurt because I still lost horses and had to carry two facilities with employees for a couple of months, but I was still able to ensure that most of the horses that did leave would come back. How much would you say the second two-month closure hurt Canadian horsepeople? The first one didn't hurt as much because everyone was closed. The second time, it was just short enough that I didn't totally get killed. If it lasted another month, it would've been disastrous up here. I don't think it killed many people. They are really short of horses up here right now, but it will slowly build back up. If you could choose any horse in history to train, which horse would it be and why? Cam Fella. He was just one of the grittiest and toughest horses to look through a bridle. He was also arguably one of the best stallions of all-time. It would be incredible to have a horse like him in my barn. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? To have one North American-wide governing body with one set of rules and medication guidelines. I know a lot of people have been advocating for this over the last 10 years. I don't think an owner should have to get a set of fingerprints in New York and then get another set of fingerprints to race in Pennsylvania and then get another set to race in New Jersey. It is so tedious. It is tough enough to find new owners as it is and then you make them have to go through that rigmarole. I think that there should be one license, one governing body, and then have divisions of that. It could be so much better. I race in one province and four or five states and it is such a pain in the ass. How do you view the future of harness racing? I see a very positive future. We have a good core of owners, breeding farms and trainers involved for the long run. Until that changes, I see a bright future. Of course there have been a lot of outside forces that have almost killed us over the years, like the casinos and slots, but harness racing has always found a way to include itself and benefit from the outside influences. We are a pretty resilient group of people and we always find a way to stay above water and turn negatives into positives. I don't think that there is anything that could destroy our business. If you decided to quit training tomorrow, who would you send your horses to? Richard Moreau is a good friend of mine and he really does well and takes care of his horses. The horses always look great and the people who work for him always seem to love him. He'd probably be the guy. Time for the stretch drive: Best Horse You Ever Saw: Somebeachsomewhere Best Race you ever saw: Bugger Bruiser -- He got me my only OSS Super Final win in 2013 and it was a super-exciting race. Best Driver Ever: John Campbell. Lasix -- Yes or No?: Yes 100%. Almost all of my horses are on it. As long as you know how to properly rehydrate a horse, I see no downside to it. I've raced as many horses on it as anyone, probably more than most, and anything we can do to help protect the horses from bleeding makes sense. The horses will be healthier, last longer and perform better. Anyone that thinks Lasix is harmful to animals is crazy. Favorite TV Show?: Yellowstone and Peaky Blinders. I can't wait for them to come back. Trotters or Pacers?: Pacers -- they produce fewer headaches and gray hair.