Dedication is Jay Wolf’s middle name

With harness racing’s greatest pacing event, The Little Brown Jug, now just a week away, Delaware, Ohio native Jay Wolf has a lot to think about.

As the Jug’s go-to man for all things promotional and publicity-oriented, Jay, 54, has been a mainstay during the harness racing meet at the Delaware County Fair since the 1990s.

“I became involved because a friend of mine—Lee Yokum—was the sports editor at the Delaware Gazette,” Jay explained. “I remember the one Jug week when David Miller won eight races in a day and Roger Huston announced that  ‘we think that’s a record.’ The word Roger used, ‘think,’ stuck with me. So that winter, during my lunch hour, I started looking up all the past Little Brown Jugs and put together a database of all of the winners, trainers, drivers, owners, etc. The next year Lee invited me to sit in the press box and after being there with him for a couple of years, Tom White asked me to help him, and I’ve been there ever since.”

Jay’s father was an attorney and had served on the Little Brown Jug Society board.

“My father was a wanna-be farmer-horseman, and we always went to Scioto Downs when I was a kid,” Jay recalled. “Dale and Evelyn Walters were good friends of ours, and my first job was at Sugar Valley Farm, where I worked painting fences. I grew up in the sport as a fan, not as a trainer-driver-caretaker.”

Jay was born and raised in Delaware, and today lives just eight doors down from the house he grew up in and is less than five miles from the fairgrounds. He attended Marion Catholic high school and later Muskingham College, where he played basketball. After completing his BA at Muskingham, he went on to get a banking accreditation from the University of Wisconsin. He worked for the Delaware County Bank and Trust Company, which later got bought out by First Commonwealth Bank, as their marketing director, a position he’s held for 34 years.

“Horse racing is my hobby,” Jay admitted. “I’m not putting food on the table with it, but I think the Jug is a family unto itself. People get together literally for the race just as they would for Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

Jay cites former Jug PR man Tom White as being not only a close friend, but also a mentor.

“My dad died when I was 18 and Tom became the father figure in my life,” Jay said. “We found we had a lot in common—we both liked and talked about horseracing and basketball. We became incredibly good friends, and one thing he always did was to preview horses in June and July and talk about how great they were, and often times, those wouldn’t be the same horses come September. So, the year that Big Bad John won the Jug, I started doing the Top Ten, but felt it was better to wait until after the Hambletonian to begin previewing horses.”

Jay received a nudge from harness racing guru Stan Bergstein after that first preview.

“Stan had razzed me about my selection because I had picked Big Bad John to win the Jug,” Jay said. “I was able to watch the horse train out here, and so I felt he had the chops to win the Jug. After he won, Stan wrote an article—which turned out to be his last because he died a week later—and in that article he wrote how astute my handicapping was, and so I felt that Stan’s last article was in some way an apology to me.”

Jay admits that despite being the pacing gait’s biggest event of the year, there are challenges. Obviously, it can be tricky with so many big event in racing to grab a slice of the media coverage pie, he says.

“Part of the problem we have is that we race our biggest race on a Thursday,” he stated. “Media people tell me that they can cover the Hambletonian because it’s on a Saturday with no problem, but having our race on Thursday, there are a lot of other things to consider.

“The first three Jugs in history were scheduled for Wednesdays,” Jay continued. “Then the third edition it was moved to Thursday and in 1950 they raced on a Saturday because of rain. In 1952 they raced the first heat on Thursday and the second and third heats were raced on Friday. The last time it was raced on a Friday was in 1986, when Barberry Spur won the Jug.

“The founders had us racing during the week because of Ohio State football games, and so that’s always something that we’ll have to deal with,” Jay admitted. “We still fight the good fight trying to get coverage and do the best to keep the interest up in the local media, such as with The Gazette, Channel Six, and Fox 28—who all give us a lot of coverage.

“With my Top Ten predictions, there’s no sense in stomping on the Hambletonian’s or any other race’s toes,” he said. “After all, there’s only so many marquee events in this business and those should be protected.”

Over the years, Jay has made it a point to provide the local media with whatever they might need, just as giving them rides in jog carts on the morning of the Jug and sitting in the announcer’s booth with Roger Huston.

“We try to make Jug week as fan friendly as possible,” Jay said. “we have our speaker series and autograph sessions and have the Jug and Jugette barns open to spectators. Our goal is to make it exciting for people to come to the fairgrounds and watch the races live and in person. It’s a big challenge every year, and what we count on is that people come here for the atmosphere. With fewer and fewer people involved in harness racing these days, we try to make the atmosphere and the fairgrounds someplace that people want to come for fun.”

The Little Brown Jug Society—made up of a board of 25 people—sells the races to the Delaware County Fair on an annual basis.

“Fifteen of those 25 folks live and work in Delaware County and so I think the Jug will always be in Delaware,” Jay stressed. “If the Jug got moved to a racetrack—say Scioto Downs or elsewhere—it would be just another big race. The Jug is special because it is here in Delaware and raced during the county fair. We have a bed tax in Delaware, so that anytime a hotel is rented in Delaware County, tax revenue comes back to the fair. For instance, we were given $2.8 million to renovate our grandstand, and right now we have design firms that are scoping out what kind of improvements might be made by this time next year.”

Always enthusiastic, Jay said he thinks the Jug will continue to attract fans as well as North America’s top pacers in the ensuing decades.

“It’s tradition, family, racing, and a county fair atmosphere all rolled up into one fantastic day,” he said determinedly. “It’s hard to find something better than that. We have one of the best fairgrounds in the State of Ohio and we work had to make the game day experience the best that we can. We consistently try to give visitors and fans something they’re not expecting, and we pride ourselves on treating people well. We’re constantly pushing the envelope to make everyone’s Jug week experience just a little bit better.”

by Kimberly Rinker, for Harnesslink