When Harness Racing Reigned at the Fair

Scanned from the 1959
Carthage Fair Premium List

An article by Dean A. Hoffman, "Ohio Racing Faces Challenges in 2010," on the Ohio Trotting Association website includes several paragraphs about harness racing at Carthage Fair--and when it ended. Hoffman's father was speed superinendent for the fair for many years. An excerpt:

He loved the Carthage Fair and never missed it from the time he was an infant. To his dying day, Dad always claimed that the greatest race he ever saw was when Adios and King’s Counsel hooked up as 2-year-olds in 1942.

“I can close my eyes and still see ‘em going down the backstretch together,” he often told me. Adios set a world record for freshman colts on a half-mile track at Carthage that day.

Hoffman goes on to say that harness racing ended "around 1970," and that it broke his father's heart so much he never returned to the fair.

My grandfather, Johnny Applegate,
captured from a '50s home movie.

I know for a fact that the final harness racing meet at Carthage Fair was in 1969. My grandfather was a harness horse driver named Johnny Applegate, and he both raced at the fair and boarded horses on the grounds between fairs. It's because of him my relationship with Carthage Fairgrounds and the fair itself runs so deep.

The reason 1969 is firmly in my memory? That last meet I was helping my grandfather around the barn almost every day, the first and last time I ever did that. I was 15. It was also the first year I entered anything at Carthage Fair. But all of that is for the next blog post.