A legend of world trotting leaves us

Filippo Lago for vendopuledri.it reports that famed Italian harness racing horseman Giancarlo Baldi passed away today (Dec. 23) at age 90.

A news that shook a routine morning for insiders, too destabilizing to leave in the minds of those who knew him personally or even just through their exploits on the track, a lucidity from which it is difficult to find the most suitable words to summarize in a few lines a career continued with a continuity of successes that is difficult to match, for years and years capable of bringing the Italian trot to the world.

A career that has seen him in the role of trainer and interpreter of countless champions capable of writing pages of the history of Italian horse racing.

Just to retrace a few stages, we cannot fail to mention the 1964 Lottery by Hurst Hanover and then continue with a partnership that continued for some time with the Biasuzzi family where horses of the caliber of Nixon, Bluebeard, Carosio, Dosson, etc. were exalted…

How can we not talk about Timothy T, a horse often mentioned in a recent interview given by Lorenzo, Giancarlo’s son, who did not hesitate to answer that it was the Prix De Paris and the 1974 Elitlopp of the “black wagon” that aroused the most emotions in him. Timothy T was often joked about because of his dark color.

Giancarlo, however, was also the man of Pradona, a training center in Italy where his son Lorenzo still continues the business, a place from which numerous champions created in symbiosis with his son emerged, just think of Indro Park and Lancaster OM.

Lorenzo, who, after the experience in America where, among other events, he triumphed in a Triple Crown race with Magic Lobell at the Yonkers Trot, gave a fundamental impulse to that training center that is now among the most important in Italy. The 800-meter ring is the same design as the New Egypt, USA training track built by Stanley Dancer, the same track where Continental Farm and Marcus Melander works today. At one time, it was Stanley Dancer who put in Giancarlo’s hands the design of the track for the revival of the same oval in Italy.

Giancarlo will be missed by his family, friends and those who had the opportunity to know him and watch him compete.

by Filippo Lago, for vendopuledri.it