This October, Waldoboro resident Ronald Ralph will be inducted into the New England Chapter of the US Harness Writers Association Hall of Fame. Ralph is being honored for his years of service to the sport of harness racing as a horse owner.
Ralph, who has lived in Waldoboro “so long I remember my grandfather taking me down to the tracks by Depot Street to put down pennies because FDR was coming through,” learned harness racing from his father, Harold Ralph.
Harness racing is a horse racing sport where the rider is behind the horses in a small, chariot-like harness.
In the last decade harness racing has seen a major resurgence, Ralph said. In his opinion, the rise has been a direct result of several states allowing slot machines on the decks at tracks.
Without slot machines, harness racing tracks have a hard time surviving, Ralph said, but with them, they thrive.
“When a track’s doing well, you see a lot of horse owners with new pickup trucks and trailers – which helps all of us,” Ralph said. Harness racing has ripples into many parts of the economy, including truck and trailer sales, hay and veterinary sales, blacksmiths, and hotels, restaurants and gas stations as people travel to race.
For Ralph, racing has been a passion through the highs and lows of the sport.
His father started racing and training horses in 1941. For years Ralph had to stay and run the family business, Harold C. Ralph Chevrolet, while his father ran horses.
“It all started with him,” Ralph said one afternoon at the Chevy dealership. “Both the horses and the profitable business.”
When he was 38 years old, Ralph bought his first horse. Over the years he’s done some training, but primarily he’s been an owner. At his peak, about 20 years ago he said, he owned about a dozen horses, and he estimates that he’s owned 100 horses over the years.
For many years, he served as a director for the US Trotting Association, which oversees harness racing throughout the country. He’s traveled the length of the East Coast and as far West as Pennsylvania for races and has seen some impressive highs throughout the decades.
One of his horses, Dreamy Freckles, set and still holds the world record in the 9/16-mile. The record-breaking run was at Union Raceway on Aug. 28, 1999. “That made it nice,” Ralph said. “That it was on my home track.”
On Aug. 15, 1990 at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, his horse Indianapolis, which Ralph says is the best horse he ever owned, broke a 52-year-old world record set by a legendary trotter in the one-mile – the standard for harness racing.
“It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve met a lot of nice people,” Ralph said of his years in the sport.
Modesty precluded him from expressing anything but disbelief towards his induction into the hall of fame, but he was adamant that Indianapolis deserves a spot in – but has not as of yet been inducted to – the hall of fame.
“He deserves to be in the horse hall of fame, probably more than I deserve to be in the human part,” Ralph said.
