What kind of car do you drive? Buick SUV. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? I'm half Italian, so I like a lot of Italian food. For snack, anything sweet. I usually have a little ice cream or something every day. I probably shouldn't because I'm overweight, but I do anyhow. Being as I'm 80, I said the hell with it and I do what I want. What is your favorite track to race at? The Red Mile. For years I'd go down there and if I didn't have any good horses they'd always have those Late Closers, and for some reason, I'd be able to win some of those and the owners would get excited and buy horses for the next year. What is your favorite big event in racing? The Hambletonian. When I won it with Mack Lobell for the first time, that was something that stayed with me for a long time. When I won it with Chip Chip Horray, who I had an interest in, that was a big thrill because he wasn't the favorite. How often is racing on your mind? Every day. I'm in Florida now and I have to stay down here because of the situation I'm in, but I look to see who is racing just about every day. How does it work with you in Florida and the horses competing up north? Do they go to a second trainer? Yes. This is the first time I've ever had to do that. I sent them to a gentleman by the name of Herman Heitmann. He just has a small one-horse stable, but he is very good. He oversees things with a girl that has worked with me for years, Kelly Smith. They are doing a good job. How are you dealing with not being around the horses? I'm bored sitting down here in Florida, but I have to do what I have to do right now. I'm looking forward to getting the horses back in the fall so I can go to the barn every day for four to five hours. I'm making the best of the situation that I have right now. I go up usually once a month for two or three days. I was there once in July and once the first of August. So far I haven’t had to make any changes when I've been up there. What is your favorite thing to do outside of racing? Go to the casino. Everybody knows that. What's your favorite casino game? Probably craps or video poker. What is your favorite sport to watch? Team? Football – Probably the (New York) Giants. I used to be a Detroit (Lions) fan but since I moved out east I switched to the Giants. What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don't know? I'm very lucky. You have to be lucky in this business. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Thrill (of winning). How did you get started in the sport? I was a freshman at Bowling Green University and my father, which I didn't know, had a couple of trotters training at the Bowling Green fairgrounds. One day he told me to go over there and watch these horses train and I had never seen a horse up to that time. By my sophomore year I quit college and went to help him with the horses. Do you regret not finishing college? Not really because I've been very successful in this business and had a great time. I don't know what I would've done if I didn't do this. Everyone knows you are in the Hall of Fame and won multiple Hambletonians, but how many know you won 214 races as a driver? Probably not too many. My percentage was pretty good if I remember right. Did you enjoy driving? Yeah. Of course most of it was around the Ohio fairs, but as soon as I had a horse good enough to go to Detroit, I found out quickly that I had to quit the driving stuff. That's when I became friends with Chris Boring, because the whole thing with driving is leaving the gate. If I left the gate and didn't have enough horse to make the top, I ended up parked. Chris Boring would leave the gate and the two or three-hole would open up for him. So I found out you needed to use one of the guys up there. Chris should be in the Hall of Fame. He won the Little Brown Jug once (Colt Fortysix, 1984) with a horse he trained. He was the leading driver in Michigan for many years and also Chicago. What is the best advice you've ever gotten about harness racing? Be patient. Don't hang up every horse the same. Each one is an individual. I've seen it for years, guys come out with a good horse and he wears a shadow roll and a kant c back. Then every horse has a shadow roll and a kant c back. You just can't do that. What was your favorite moment in harness racing? Winning my first Hambletonian with Mack Lobell. Everybody in this business, if you ask them one race they want to win, that one comes up. There was a lot of pressure and when he won there was great relief. It was a great moment. Which are the five best horses you've ever trained? I thought at the end of his 3-year-old year that Pine Chip was a better horse than Mack (Lobell). Unfortunately when he was 4 when we went to the Elitlopp, they wouldn't let me race him the way I had him hung up in the States and that cost me the Elitlopp. He was the best horse. Then he got sick when he came back. Besides those two, I guess Muscles Yankee and Lucky Chucky, and one of the most interesting horses I had was Brightlight Lobell. Which horse is/was your all-time favorite? Pine Chip. He was a great-looking horse with a good personality. He never did anything wrong. He was a pleasure to be around and to train. Is there a race that you haven't won but are still holding out hope? Not really. I don't train pacers anymore. I'd love to win a fifth Hambletonian somehow. When is the last time you trained a pacer? I probably haven't trained a pacer in the last 20 years. I trained pacers regularly until Bea Farber, God rest her soul, came along. When she came to Detroit you couldn't beat her. But she couldn’t train a trotter. At that point I had pacers and I basically switched over to all trotters. You recently turned 80 back in June. Have you accomplished everything you wanted to in the sport? I still get excited and have the thrill of training them and watching them win. What drives you to continue to train? I'm still pretty healthy. I feel good. I'm not a guy that can sit around and do nothing. My whole life I've gotten up early and gone to the barn to work. It is a routine you get into. If you stop doing things, you are going to die. You have to keep doing something. I don't work in the yard or run, though I do a little swimming. How good is your 2-year-old colt trotter Arnold N Dicky? We haven't seen the bottom of him yet. He loves to do his work and is perfect to drive. So far he has maybe done more than I thought he would. Dave Palone has been driving him lately and he said that he hasn't gotten it all out of him yet. What does Arnold N Dicky have left this year in terms of stakes? Not a lot. Because of the Gural Rule he wasn't eligible to anything at The Meadowlands (Valley Victory, etc.). He has a (Pennsylvania) Sire Stakes next Sunday (8/23 at Pocono – broke before start). If everything goes right he'll go to the final (9/5 at Pocono). Then he goes to Delaware (County Fairgrounds) for one race and then Kentucky (Red Mile - Bluegrass and International Stallion Stakes). That's it. I don't know why I didn't pay him into the Breeders Crown, but I didn't. He is eligible to everything next year. Is he a potential Hambletonian horse? For sure. I'm not going to hurt him because he only has about four more starts left this year. If he comes back good, I think he'll be a contender. How many horses do you have in training? Two 3-year-olds and Arnold N Dicky. The two 3-year-olds will be sold this fall and I'll try to pick up three yearlings. Outside of your horses, if you could choose any horse in history to train, which horse would it be and why? I've seen some horses over the years that I thought got ruined early and I'd like to have them. I'm not sure I could pick out a particular one. I just felt a lot of guys ruined their horses in their first two or three starts and that was the end of them. That is why Arnold N Dicky has raced really easy. Tyler Buter did a great job with him the first couple of starts. He just let him trot at the end. The day he qualified with Dexter Dunn, I knew he was a good horse. I had a chance to get Armbro Goal, who won the Hambletonian (1988). They called me and wanted me to take him. Since I had two others that were contenders for the Hambletonian, to protect my owners, I decided not to take him. If I had to do it again, I would've taken that horse. Along the lines of pushing 2-year-olds too hard, do you think the tighter schedule because of COVID-19 has been an issue? Everybody is panicking because if you look at earnings, no one has made any money. The yearling sales are going to be coming up over the next couple of months and guys are trying to pick up what they can in terms of money. One person who has gotten really good about not ruining his horses early is Ake Svanstedt. He used to have everything ready for the first couple of races and he's gotten smart. He has a lot of good 2-year-olds right now that he has raced pretty easy. Generally, why do you think horses have gotten so much faster over the last 20 years? They are so in-bred. It is just naturally just easier for these horses. To tell you the truth, I never would've picked up Arnold N Dicky if it wasn't for co-owner Neil Goldman. He picks out all of our horses on pedigree to look at. For some reason people didn't want the horse and we got him really cheap. On the entire sale in Kentucky (Lexington Selected) he might have 12-to-15 horses that fit his pedigrees. He's very good at what he does. How has COVID-19 affected your life and business? I have two daughters that live down in Florida and they made us stay home. They did all the shopping for us. We live in a 50 and older community. All I did was go to the barn, hang out with people I knew were safe, and come home. I didn't go to any restaurants, do any shopping, or anything. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? Possibly the way the stakes payments are handled. Maybe go to more of a Thoroughbred system were you don't pay much until later and you make bigger payments as the year goes on. I also loved the Hambletonian having two heats in one day, but they recently changed that. If it would've been two heats this year the filly (Ramona Hill) wouldn't have won because she wouldn't have been in there. He wouldn't have raced her two heats in one day, so we would've had a different Hambo winner. Two heats has been part of our sport for over 100 years. Let them do it. People keep saying that our horses are more like Thoroughbreds; they don't take the work and it hurts them to go two heats in one day. Maybe it does, but that is what our business has been about forever. How do you view the future of harness racing? I don't like it. I think if it wasn't for the casinos we'd be in big trouble right now. You will find out that casinos will try to keep taking a bit more away each year. We've seen the best of harness racing in terms of purses. There will always be harness racing, but it won't be what it is or what it has been. Sales to me have been overpriced and a lot of people lost money. Luckily those people are very rich and it hasn’t hurt them. It seems like if they buy 15 of them and one turned out good and won a lot of money, they forgot about the rest. Time for the stretch drive: Best Horse You Ever Saw: Muscle Hill – He was extraordinary. We were the under-bidder on him. Of course I wish we would've bought him now. Best Driver Ever: John Campbell back in the day was the smartest driver. He knew going into a race 25-to-30 years ago exactly what everybody was going to do in the race. Lasix – Yes or No?: No, I don't like it . To me Lasix was brought on by using drugs or stress. I can't remember the last time I had a horse on Lasix. Favorite TV Show?: Two and a Half Men. Trotters or Pacers?: Trotters.