Stars out at Cumberland Run on opening day

CORBIN, Ky. — Cumberland Run launched its second live harness racing meet on a sun-soaked Sunday with 14 Kentucky Sires Stakes legs for 2-year-old trotters and pacers. Driving many of those horses were the sport’s biggest names, reflecting Kentucky harness racing’s upward trajectory.

Yannick Gingras, inducted into the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in 2022, made his debut at Cumberland Run.

“It’s a nice facility,” he said. “The money is great. It’s Kentucky. It’s crazy the job they’d done with the Sires Stakes program. It’s second to none. There’s so much money to go around among the three tracks (in the state). I love it.”

And that was before he won three races.

Cumberland Run’s 12-day meet runs Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays through Nov. 5, with first post at 1 p.m. ET. Admission and parking are free.

The Sires Stakes legs for 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds (the first legs of those are Monday) are worth $40,000 apiece, leading into a $100,000 final for the top eight qualifiers in each division. Four-year-olds will have three $50,000 legs and no final.

Nationally prominent drivers Scott Zeron, Todd McCarthy and Tim Tetrick also were at Cumberland Run for the first time. Along with Gingras, each has won harness racing’s greatest race, the Hambletonian for 3-year-old trotters.

At Cumberland Run they were greeted with sunshine and 80 degrees, in contract to the rain and cold for last year’s inaugural card.

“It’s really nice to see the local community come out and enjoy this outstanding day of racing,” said Ted Nicholson, Vice President of Racing for Cumberland Run and its sister thoroughbred track, Kentucky Downs. “The horsemen here are sone of the top players in the country, right here in their backyard.”

McCarthy, who came to America from his native Australia in 2020, also won three races. He said he expects to be at Cumberland Run for almost all of the dozen dates.

“It’s great. It’s a beautiful place to be out here,” said McCarthy, who ranks No. 6 nationally in purse earnings this year at $7.7 million. “It was a nice day of racing here, so it was a lot of fun the first day.” Of the Kentucky Sires Stakes program, he said, “It’s bringing a lot of people to the state. It’s obviously doing a lot for racing. For us, it’s a lot of traveling back and forth from the East Coast. But it’s great racing, so we’re happy to be here.”

Zeron, a three-time Hambletonian winner whose main base is New Jersey’s Meadowlands and New York’s Yonkers Raceway, said the lure of so many good horses now being eligible for the Kentucky Sires Stakes brought him to Corbin. He said the game-changer is the rule change allowing horses to be “Kentucky eligible” if either the sire and/or the mare resided in the commonwealth for 180 days during the calendar year of conception. That allowed many horses to be dual-eligible with other states’ stallion and breed programs.

“These are the best horses we have going, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Zeron, whose $8 million in purses so far in 2024 ranks No. 5, said of Kentucky. “It’s massive. Usually Kentucky was never on the schedule. Now it’s the main target on the schedule. All three tracks. These are the fastest, best horses – here in the state of Kentucky.”

Dexter Dunn, America’s leading purse-earner in three the last four years and in front so far this year at $12.6 million, participated in only nine Cumberland Run races last year, with five wins and four seconds. He said his participation will increase this year.

“I think I was only here for two or three days, but it’s good to be back,” said Dunn, who also won three races on the opening card. “(Cumberland Run) is only going to get better each year, getting more race meets under its belt. Kentucky is just getting stronger and stronger. It’s got a great program, and it’s why we’re here.”

Those are the kinds of comments Kentucky Rep. Tom Smith of Corbin wants to hear. Smith, whose district includes Cumberland Run, said the track is the sort of economic development the General Assembly envisioned when lawmakers voted in 2021 to protect historical horse racing gaming at the state’s parimutuel tracks.

“I just got through talking to Ron (Winchell) and Marc (Falcone), the owners,” he said. “It’s a large investment for our community. As you can see, the turnout is good. It’s a positive for the horse industry, no matter what breed.

“… Not only are we the thoroughbred capital of the world, but we’ve got other breeds such as standardbred that are also important. You used to see them run for only a few thousand dollars. Today they’re running for $40,000 per race. It helps the industry grow. That was the Legislature’s intent.”

Also with hat tricks on the card: Hall of Fame driver David Miller and Ron Burke, harness racing’s all-time winningest trainer. Tony Alagna, last year’s leading trainer at Cumberland Run, won two races.

Yo! Local guy Yoder wins as ‘Tillie’ goes to 6 for 10

The days are past when most horses at many standardbred tracks were driven by their trainers. But there was a notable exception Sunday at Cumberland Run when owner-trainer-driver Verlin Yoder won the 12th race with his filly trotter Yo Tillie.

Yoder doesn’t just ship in and out of Kentucky. Living and racing in Florida in the winters and racing at Indiana’s Hoosier Park in the summer, Yoder handicapped the terrain two years ago. He bet on Kentucky and bought a farm where he trains his modest-sized stable (10-12 horses in the winter) in Columbia, Ky. It’s a true family operation, with his wife, Rachel, and grown kids involved.

“Steve Stewart of Hunterton Farm (in Paris), good friend of mine, he kept on talking to me about the program, where the program is going, where we’re going to be in three years,” Yoder said. “And he hasn’t lied so far. He was one of the main reasons I made up my mind to do this, to try and just switch to Kentucky. I’ve always said, ‘If you switch somewhere, don’t half (way) do it. Go all in.’ We went all in.

“It took me a year to get my feet under me, and I still don’t have my feet under me. But we’re gaining.”

Yo Tillie is helping Yoder get a foot-hold. She won the $100,000 2-year-old trotting filly Sires Stakes final at Oak Grove, near Fort Campbell, and was third in the $400,000 final at Lexington’s The Red Mile in her last start, Sept. 18. She was one of only two horses racing Sunday with as many as five wins. Now Yo Tillie is 6-1-1 in 10 starts, earning $235,300.

“She’s really grown up,” Yoder said. “She’s starting to mature into a better horse to drive. She’s been a very fast filly all year; sometimes she was just hard to drive…. This is awesome. You can have a Kentucky-eligible 2-year-old, and they can race for $1 million from the first of June to the first of November.”

From Cumberland Run