Danny Dale – Harness racing starter supreme

The outcome of a harness race could very well be decided on what is known as a “fair start”.

When harness racing drivers wheel their horses onto the track and line up behind the starting gate attached to the car for each race, it is the job of the starter, who is a licensed racing judge, to make sure that the start is fair. It looks easy, but it’s not.

For one thing, the starter, sitting backwards to the direction the car is moving, alone controls the speed of the starting car. The starter faces the drivers and horses behind the gate, keenly watching them for anything that would prevent a fair start.  The assistant starter is behind the steering wheel in the front seat facing forward, with the sole responsibility to steer the vehicle.

Next comes the critical time for the starter to accomplish the goal of a fair start. And there’s always the possibility that interference or broken equipment could cause problems in getting the race off.

As the car approaches the starting point of the race, the starter, who has complete control of the speed. He uses a special device, which is connected to the car engine, accelerate the car consistent with the increasing speed of the horses. The car has to eventually be much faster than the horses as they reach the starting point and clear the racing area.  The starter has only seconds to make an immediate decision if the race needs to be recalled because of interference or any other incident happening behind the gate.

No one knows this better than Danny Dale, who retired in 2017 after more than 45 years as a harness race starter, the last 30 of which were at The Meadowlands in New Jersey, and prior to that at Liberty Bell Park in Philadelphia (PA), Garden State Park in Cherry Hill (NJ), Freestate Raceway (MD), and occasionally filling in at Freehold Raceway (NJ) and The Red Mile in Lexington (KY).

Dale was part of the only known third generation family of harness race starters in the United States. He was raised and now lives in Mount Vernon, IL, near DuQuoin where his grandfather and father had a starting car business. All three had the distinction of starting the world famous Hambletonian, Danny 30 years at The Meadowlands and his grandfather John C. Dale several years and his father John R. “Bob” Dale once in 1962, both at DuQuoin.

Of course, during his 30 years at the Meadowlands, Danny Dale was the starter for the major stake’s races in the sport there, as well as many at Garden State Park, including Breeders Crowns and the world-famous International Trot.

When Danny was a teenager, he would work with his grandfather John and father Bob as they built their own gates. as they built their own gates. He got his driver’s license at 16 and had his own car. But he didn’t expect what would happen next.

Danny got his “baptismal” of sorts on a trip in 1964 with his grandfather to The Meadows.

Once at the track, his grandfather had him practice driving the starting car around the oval with the gates open. The next thing Danny knew, it was time for the first race and he was steering the car as the drivers lined their horses behind the gate.

The only problem was that the gates never closed. His grandfather told him to carefully steer the car so that the wings on both sides of the car stayed between the inside and outside fencing of the track.  Danny had the very difficult job of steering the car with the wings open for a quarter of a mile before the start and for another mile in the race.  No doubt Grandfather John gave him a few “atta boys”.

Danny didn’t become a starter at that time. It wasn’t until 1973 that he joined his father Bob to take over the starting duties at Liberty Bell Park.  Bob Dale was the starter for 10 years and Danny for 12 more. Danny added Garden State Park and Freestate to his resume, and then on to The Meadowlands. “I served there with Milt Taylor, Jim Lynch, Water Russell, Frank DeFrancis, Joe DeFrank, Chris McErlean and John Tomasello” he recalls of the track and racing officials.

The starter is perhaps the least visible and unrecognized, yet perhaps the most important participant involved in an actual harness race.

He explains that the starter has to make an immediate decision if something goes wrong, like broken equipment on a horse or interference by one horse against another. “It could decide the outcome (of the race),” he says.

“I have a great deal of respect for the (harness) drivers. Their job was a lot harder than mine,” he says.

Drivers who have earned their place in the prestigious Harness Racing Hall of Fame and have raced thousands of times behind Danny Dale’s starting gate, universally praise the popular racing official for his reliability and consistency.

Could they count on Dale to produce a fair start?

“I have nothing but respect for Danny, professionally and personally,” says Hall of Fame driver John Campbell, who is now president of The Hambletonian Society.  “He was a no-nonsense guy.”

Campbell, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990, had more than 63,000 races behind starting gates in his career. He explains that consistency is what the driver wants as he gets his horse behind the gate. “He made it easier to be on the gate because he was consistent.

“You know what your horse will do, and it improves your chances of getting on the gate when the starter is consistent with his control of the (car’s) speed,” he adds.

As the starting gate moves closer to the starting point, the starter and the drivers will sometimes talk or shout back and forth, because the surrounding noise is very loud.

“Get ‘em up. You’re too far back,” Campbell gives an example of what Dale might shout to the drivers.  And drivers would call out to alert Dale when interference or equipment problems occurred as the gate was moving.

Bill O’Donnell, also inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990 with Campbell, came to respect Dale the first time he was behind his starting gate. “I couldn’t have been off more than a half-length,” he recalls of the race at The Meadowlands, noting that Dale called him over to the starting car to tell him he was too far off the gate.

“I made a few excuses, probably blamed the horse. Then he gave me three days (suspension). There was no bull shit,” O’Donnell adds.  “He was very professional. He always talked to you privately, whether it was between races at the car or in the paddock. He never talked to you in front of others.”

Noting that some tracks now use computers to regulate and accelerate starting car speed, O’Donnell, who drove more than 40,000 races, states further:

“He was the best starter I’ve ever raced behind. He was consistent with the speed of the gate.   He did it by feel, so smooth.”

Consistent was also the word that Yannick Gingras, the latest harness driver to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, uses to describe how Dale handled the speed of the car whenever he was behind the starting gate.

“We don’t have to guess,” Gingras says about the speed that the starting car will be going. “He was great, consistent, direct. It was like telling the drivers to get on the gate, you do your job and I’ll do mine,” he adds.”

When asked about his handling the start of a race, Hall of Famer driver Tim Tetrick says, “You could always count on him for a fair start.”

Referring to Dale’s control of the starting car speed as the drivers line up behind the gate, he adds, “It’s much easier when we know he’s consistent.”

Former harness driver-trainer Paul Consol served a few years as an assistant starter steering the car. “It’s teamwork. We worked great together,” he says.

Here is what Dale says about that part of the race.  “We’re co-workers. I couldn’t do my job if the assistant starer didn’t do his,” says Dale, explaining that the assistant starter is the set of eyes on a part of the race he doesn’t see. “He notifies me about anything on the track in front of the car that could cause a recall.”

Dale is enjoying retirement in his hometown of Mt. Vernon with his wife Debbie. He spends some of his spare time helping with a weekly car auction in nearby Woodlawn and was recently elected president of American Legion Post 141.

by Leon Zimmerman, for Harnesslink

(A guest columnist for Harnesslink, Leon Zimmerman is a 2009 inductee in the Harness Racing Communicators Hall of Fame)