Kiwi Connection a blessing for Harrison

When Bill Harrison scored his first harness racing driving victory on June 7, 2024, at The Meadowlands, it was a New Zealand trifecta, so to speak.

Bill, 36, is the son of longtime New Jersey trainer and New Zealand native Kelvin Harrison, and when he steered the pacer Yer So Bad, a son of Roll With Joe, to a 1:52.1 clocking in an amateur driving contest, the win was for none-other than fellow New Zealand expat, trainer Symon Spicer.

Yer So Bad is a 7-year-old, owned by longtime friends Karen Taft and Tony Verruso.

“It was truly an amazing experience, a dream come true,” Bill expressed. “I worked for my dad for a while when I got out of high school, and as much as I love harness racing, I chose another profession so I could have a life outside of racing, but it was always my biggest dream to win a race at The Meadowlands.”

Bill grew up in New Jersey’s Millstone township, attending Allentown high school and participating in basketball, football, and baseball.

“I played sports my whole life but always just wanted to be at the barn and be involved with my dad’s horses,” Bill explained. “Every day of every summer I was going to the barn every day and if I didn’t have a game, I was at the Meadowlands. Early on I knew that if I was going to be in the horse business, I knew I had to eat and sleep horses. It takes over your whole life.”

After much thought, Bill decided to become an iron worker, and has been with the North Jersey Iron Workers #11 for 11 years.

“I was contemplating a trade, and it turns out that one of my dad’s good friends—Jim Slendorn—who also drives in the amateur events, was in the Iron Workers union,” Bill said. “He told me about the trade, and I took a shot. We do most of our work in north (New) Jersey, and it’s all about heights. We’re hundreds of feet up in the air on a daily basis.”

Bill officially began driving in 2010 and has had 44 starts to date. His father Kelvin, 74, has a stable of “a dozen or so” horses stabled at Magical Acres. Born in Methvan, New Zealand, just outside of Christchurch, Kelvin began training stateside in 1991 and to date has conditioned 1,251 winners to $16,133,339. He scored his best season in 2007, when he trained the winners of $925,218.

Likewise, Symon Spicer, 48, began training racehorses here in the United States in 2018. During his first three years of conditioning trotters and pacers, Spicer’s charges earned $49,792. Then, in 2021, his career got a boost when he trained 50 winners to $597,810. The following year he trained 60 winers to $741,980, and in 2023 he harnessed 40 winners to $545,767 in seasonal earnings. In total, Spicer’s statistics ring in at 1,444 starts, with 179 wins, 205 seconds, and 179 thirds, for $2,139,048 in career earnings.

“The way it worked out for me to drive Yer So Bad is that Symon (trainer Spicer) asked if I wanted to drive the horse and I was excited to have the opportunity to do that,” Bill said. “Then once I realized that I knew the owner (Karen Taft), that I had played baseball with her son Brett, it was just the icing on the cake by winning with that horse.

“It’s an incredible full circle connection with Symon and with Karen, and the whole Kiwi connection,” he added. “I plan to continue to compete in the amateur races and hope to get more drives. There’s nothing better than going to the Meadowlands on Friday and Saturday night. I love the competition in those races and take it pretty seriously. I feel blessed to get the best of both worlds. It’s really a thrill.”

by Kimberly Rinker, for Harnesslink