Dixon etches his name in history

Champion reinsman Grant Dixon has achieved a feat no other driver in Queensland harness racing history has achieved before.

The 49-year-old reached 5000 wins and fittingly it was with his top class pacer Colt Thirty One at Albion Park tonight (Aug. 13).

Dixon has won several races with the Mach Three entire, including three Group 1 features, and now this milestone.

Colt Thirty One was Dixon’s first drive on tonight’s card and after racing outside the leader and race favourite Mach Da Vinci, the seven-year-old fought on gamely to win by one metre.

That was Colt Thirty One’s 50th win in 113 starts, pushing his stakes to $1,069,026.

As outlined in this week’s edition of Harnesslink Insider only two others have driven more winners in Australia since electronic records have been kept.

They are Chris Alford who has 7705 wins at the time of writing and the late Gavin Lang who drove 6193 winners.

Electronic records have West Australian reinsman Chris Lewis with 4880 wins and began driving in the 1984/85 season.

However, in 2017 reporter Alan Parker wrote that the driver reached 5000 wins and drove his first winner in 1972. To see the story click here.

Dixon, a 16-time Group 1 winner, started driving in the 1988/89 season.

He has had 31,981 drives and 8,847 placings amongst that.

The son of legendary horseman, the late Bill Dixon has won most of the major feature races in Queensland.

Some of his Group 1 wins in the last decade have been with pacers Colt Thirty One, Leap To Fame, and Governor Jujon, to name a few.

COLT THIRTY ONE REPLAY

by Amanda Rando, for Harnesslink