Tim Twaddle has been participating in harness racing for more than 50 years and while he hit his prime as a driver in the 1990s and hasn't sat in the bike since 2010, the Ontario native is perhaps peaking as a trainer at the ripe age of 59. In 2021, Twaddle set new highs for starters and barn earnings while equaling his best win total (61). The Cannonsburg, PA resident already has 38 wins this year and added a chunk to his earnings total when Fourever Boy was fifth in the $600,000 Meadowlands Pace. Twaddle was kind enough to spend time on a Monday to discuss his career and so much more. Enjoy! How did you get started in harness racing? I grew up in St. Catherine's, Ontario in Canada and there was a racetrack called Garden City in my hometown. Every night before I went to bed my mom would take me and park on the backside of the track so I could see the first couple of races each night. I got hooked at a very early age. I was always horse-crazy and once I got the racing bug it facilitated my need to be around horses. Was anyone in your family involved before you? Not in racing. I had an uncle who worked security at the racetrack and he had teenage twin daughters who worked there as messenger bettors. Back then they had girls that wore uniforms in the dining room and they would take the bets from people who were eating. My older sister got a job doing the same thing and through her I met a trainer named Bill Carroll. I wrote him a letter to see if I could muck stalls during the weekend and of course he said yes. He would pick me up and I'd go every week to help him and be around the track as much as I could. I was about 7 or 8 years old. Who most helped you start your career? There were a lot of people over the years. Bill Carroll was the first. There was a trainer in St. Catherine's named Teddy Jacobs, his dad worked with my dad so he was older than me, he had a farm close by and I would go out there and feed his horses every night. Teddy raced a lot at Buffalo and Batavia as well as the Ontario Jockey Club. I used to tag along with him and he would show me how to paddock horses and stuff like that. When I was with Bill Carroll I met my best friend Dave Boughton. When he left Bill Carroll he went to work for John Burns and I just followed Dave. When I got out of college I went to work for John Burns full time. What kind of car do you drive? Lincoln MKX. I wanted a truck but I figured I'd be doing so much driving this summer from track to track that I'd be more comfortable with an SUV instead. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? Steak on the grill. For snack it depends on what I'm drinking at the time. Planters peanuts with my beer; Jarlsberg cheese with my cabernet; my wife's homemade pie (apple, cherry) with my coffee; Oreo cookies with milk. What is your favorite track to race at? The defunct Greenwood Raceway. It was a beautiful track on the beaches of Toronto. The barn area on the backside bordered Lake Ontario beach. I remember the smell of the air from the lake during the summertime. The scenery was great. It was just a nice part of Toronto and a great place to watch races from. A streetcar ran right by the front of the track and the place was jammed every day. I have great memories of that track -- good and bad because I got busted up there a few times. What is your favorite big event in racing? There are so many and now I'm able to be part of some of them so it is a real treat. Before I had this colt [Fourever Boy], I would say the Jug or the Jugette, I was able to win the Jugette once and it was a thrill. The Breeders Crown is also a big event and a pinnacle of my career. How often are horses or racing on your mind? 24/7. Unfortunately I can't shut it down even when I sleep. I wake myself up remembering something I have to write down about a training change or equipment. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I look at Ronnie Burke and it blows me away. There is no off button on him. He's very hands-on and has a great work ethic. Some people say he's grumpy but he's got so much going on in his mind that he just doesn't have time to sit around and B.S. with people. He has 300 horses on his mind. What is your favorite thing to do outside of racing? It used to be golf but I don't make the time to do that anymore, I don't know why. We put a pool in a number of years back and if I get any time at all I just love to have a free afternoon with the family, a couple of cold beers and a steak on the grill. The less I do the happier I am. What is your favorite sport? Team? Hockey -- Pittsburgh Penguins. What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don't know? They would probably be amazed at the amount of hardware I've had in my body. I shattered my hip one year but I did get those plates out. I still have metal in my knee tracing back to a bad hubrail accident at Greenwood a number of years ago. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Exhilarating. You moved from Canada to the U.S. in 1995. Why did you make the switch? I had heart surgery in January of '95, I wasn't training, just driving back then, and months later when I came back to health I just didn't have any work. I had driven a few PA-breds over the years that were very nice horses and people knew me from that. I called Roger Huston and he told me to come down. He did a nice job promoting me on his on-air show and I started to get some catch-drives. Your home base has been The Meadows since 2006. How has the game changed for you in the last 15 years? It was home base from June of 1995 but I went back and forth a couple of seasons during the winter to drive at Los Alamitos. Then I met my future wife out there and we started a stable and stayed in Sacramento for the next seven years. When we started our family we didn't want to raise them out there so we moved back to around The Meadows in '06. The game has changed quite a bit. The last time I got hurt I backed away from the driving and that's where the sport has changed the most. I miss driving but I don't think I could go back to it. I don't know how guys now hold horses. I was always small and would have to sit up in the seat with my handholds up. These guys lean back and their handholds are in their chests. I don't know how to do it and wouldn't feel comfortable. For me the style of the drivers has changed. It's a speed game. Everything is made for speed and the catch-driver is just a hired gun who makes speed. I shouldn't say there is little regard for the horse, but until you drive and train your own, that gives you a different mindset. You are always thinking about the next week or next year, preserving your horse so you can get the most out of them. These guys you put up are paid to produce and they have to do it right now or they won't work next week. Nobody wants a guy who finishes fourth and fifth every week. You have 1,946 wins as a driver and almost 900 as a trainer (since USTA started records in 1992). What do those numbers mean to you? When I was driving I kept track of every win and every accident in a book. When you are younger you have numbers and goals and want to be the best. When you get older and have a family, you realize none of that matters. I come home, look at my kids, wife and dog and realize it wouldn't matter if I had 2,000 or 20,000 wins. I look at Dave Palone and Aaron Merriman and it blows my mind that they can put those kind of numbers up, but it is a different game for them than it is for me. When I was hurt and ready to back away from driving I said that as soon as I got to 2,000 I would quit. She said ok because she didn't want me to get hurt and she knew I was racing with a bum hand. Then I thought about it one day and said 'what the hell is it going to matter if I have 2,000 wins?' Nobody is going to care so I called it off. It was hard to get used to not driving for a while. It was like watching somebody dance with your wife, you work on them all week and then you have to hand the lines over, but I'm much better with it now. The drivers are much better now too. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter Do you think most people realize you have won the Breeders Crown, Jugette and Metro among other races as a driver? No, I don't. When I went up for the North America Cup and ran into friends from 30 or 40 years ago, they remember, but it is a new age and I don't think people now know and frankly I don't think they care. It is not like I'm John Campbell, who is a name and a face who is synonymous with racing. Some may know and some may not but it doesn't matter to me. Is it more satisfying to train a winner or drive a winner? I used to think that if I couldn't drive they could just put me in a box because I didn't want to do anything else. Life's funny . . . if you want to make God laugh just tell them you have a plan because it won't work out. It was gratifying to win races for people before but not it is very satisfying to have a horse in the barn and get them to the winner's circle and make all of the connections happy. It really is a proud moment for me. A lot goes into getting a horse to win, your grooms, the guys that ride for you, your vets, your blacksmiths, but especially the grooms who never get any credit but do all the heavy lifting. In this business you are only as good as your help. Are/were you a better driver or trainer? I was a better driver because a lot of it came natural. Training you are learning every day. There is no pressure driving. You come off the cart and tell the trainer this horse was running in or out, or was steppy here, and they have to go fix them. I just knew the horse was no good whether I drove them good or bad. I would leave the scene of the crime and it was up to them to make the horse better next time. How many horse are you currently training? 30. What was your best moment in harness racing? Probably winning the Metro Pace. I beat a lot of good drivers. It was before the technology they have now with the photo finish and there was a print between me and John Campbell. We were sitting on the outside rail for what seemed like an eternity but it was probably five to eight minutes. He looked at me and said 'would you settle for a dead-heat?' and I said 'a dead-heat with you would be a dream come true.' Moments after that they hung my number up and he gave a pat on the back before escaping to the paddock. After that I was able to win some other big races but that was my breakthrough moment. I remember talking to Paul MacDonell about driving for big money because I used to get nervous in the Ontario Sired races for $25,000. He told me that as soon as you win a big one it makes racing for money easy. I didn't get it until after I won the Metro. After that the purses meant nothing and there was no pressure. You work with The Stable and Hold The Line Stable. Do you like the fractional ownership concept? I do. I'm friendly with Anthony Macdonald and he utilizes me to race horses in Pennsylvania, primarily at The Meadows. He has a great setup. A good friend of mine Jason Petri, he's a police officer in Pittsburgh, he loved the idea too and he came on board through a fractional thing that Heather Wilder spearheaded a while ago. Jason wanted to fashion something up in the same mold as Anthony Macdonald. He's done that on a much smaller scale. He's gotten some friends and family involved but his resources are limited. It's kind of a hobby for him. People get involved and they have a ball. People come to the barn four days a week easily to visit Anthony's horses if they live locally. Whether they own 1% or 90% it feels the same to them. They tell everyone they own a horse. It is a very infectious feeling. From a training perspective you had a career year in 2021 setting new heights in starters and earnings. Why? Fate brought a man named David Cohen into my barn, Micki Rae Stables. He bought a horse called Dapper Dude off a trainer here named Bill Bercury to race at Plainridge. Plainridge wasn't open at the time and they wanted to leave the horse local to race at The Meadows and Bill doesn't train outside horses. So he sent him to me. I trained him for a few months before Plainridge opened and had some success. Then we got more involved and he sent me horses from Plainridge that weren't doing well. Then we dipped our toes in the yearling market and it built from there. Now we have racehorses, 2-year-olds that we bought, 3-year-olds from last year, Dapper Dude standing stud in Maryland, and we are buying broodmares to get his career started out there. It has been a fun ride. I would go to the sale before with limited resources or try to bring in some partners so I could buy something inexpensive and now with the Micki Rae Stables we can go in with more authority and upgrade our sights. Instead of a something that might work in the stallion series we are spending $100,000 trying to hit a home run. You have a nice Ohio-bred named Allnight Micki. Do you foresee her making some noise in the Sire Stakes or outside of the state? We are having a lot of success with her this year. She was a nice filly at 2 but she was chasing in the sire stakes versus Sea Silk. This year we thought the best thing was to let her race in the lower level and win some races rather than race for second or third money in the Sire Stakes. I am going to give her a start in the Sire Stakes at Northfield because it is on the half and she's very handy. If she draws well she can be very effective and a good check could put her in position to race in the Sire Stakes consolation as well as the Buckeye final. Outside of the state she has the Adioo Volo but I'm still on the fence about that. She'll be a nice aged mare down the road. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? I'd like to change two things. One would be the licensing. There should be one license good for everywhere. I stay out of New York because the licensing there is a nightmare. It seems everywhere you go you need to get fingerprints and other things. Any professional sport it is the same rules. A cross-check in Vancouver is the same as a cross-check in Florida. It should be the same thing in our game. A whipping violation should be the same in New Jersey as in Mohawk or anywhere else. The rules and the licensing should be more universal. I think that would inspire more people to jump in. How do you view the future of harness racing? I think it looks great. Everyone you talk to is doom and gloom, that we've seen the best years go by, but I don't think you could find anything dollar for dollar on your gambling buck that is more exciting than 1:52 seconds watching a race. Everyone says we aren't promoting it enough but there are only so many dollars available for each jurisdiction. You can't get on national TV and promote it like the Kentucky Derby, we just don't have the resources. It would be great but we don't have the money. We used to be the only game in town and fans came out by the thousands. Now you can bet at home, so you better come up with something to get people live to the apron. There is nothing like being at a live sporting event. At The Meadows it is afternoon racing and people are working so they don't come to the track. Thankfully we have built up a market and people bet it. On Friday night people show up but we get crushed on the handle. I don't know what to do. If you weren't involved in harness racing, what would you be doing? Probably golf. I wasn't great but my dad was a good golfer and he could hit it a ton. I always tried to hit it like him and I fashioned myself after John Daly. I could hit it far but didn't always know where it was going. A funny story is that when I was a junior in St. Catherine's every weekend there was a match for the junior championship. It got down to the club championship weekend and I was supposed to play with another young fellow on a Sunday but I went to the track after school on Friday, my mom took me to Mohawk. I spent the weekend in the tack room with my buddy and we were clowning around. They had bunk beds and I was on the top. He was kicking me from the bottom and I went flying off the top bunk and landed on floor and broke my wrist and couldn't play in the championship. My dad was livid because he didn't like me going to the track anyway. Time for the stretch drive. Best Horse Ever: Cam Fella. Best Driver: John Campbell. Favorite horse in your barn: Fourever Boy. Lasix -- Yes or No?: Yes. Favorite TV Show?: Andy Griffith. I wish it could be like that today. I love to reminisce about how simpler life was before cell phones but I don't know where we would be without it now. If I leave my driveway without my phone I panic. Trotters or Pacers?: It used to be trotters but all my biggest hits have been pacers. I still say trotters. There is nothing better than a really nice trotter.