Racing Reflections is an occasional USTA newsroom series recounting favorite early memories of harness racing participants and their subsequent careers in the sport.

Ken Weingartner

Hightstown, NJ — Like many who grew up around harness racing, Iowa native Nick Roland began jogging horses before he was a teenager. It was as a teenager, though, that a horse named Indian Folklore came to him and ignited his passion for the sport.

Indian Folklore, a pacer owned by Roland’s grandfather Roger, raced on the Chicago circuit for several years early in his career before returning to Iowa at the age of 5 in 1999.

“Grandpa told me to take him and I could have whatever he made,” said Roland, who at the time had just turned 17. “That horse really got me going, got me hooked.

“I was just starting driving, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. There were a couple times I got parked for the mile and he just would grind it out. He was the gutsiest racehorse that you could ever imagine.”

Nick Roland is the all-time winningest driver at Running Aces, with more than 800 victories. Dee Leftwich photo.

In his first two full seasons back in Iowa, Indian Folklore won 20 of 34 races, hit the board a total of 27 times, and earned $13,552.

“Being young, that was a lot of money,” Roland said. “That was how I really got started.”

Roland continued driving and training part time while in high school and college, and, after graduating from college, for a year while working as an insurance agent. When the track Running Aces opened in Minnesota in 2008, he decided to race on a fulltime basis.

Today, he is the all-time winningest driver at Running Aces, with more than 800 victories. For his career, he has won 1,839 races as a driver and 773 as a trainer.

“My parents wanted me to get a regular job and (race) during the summer on the side,” Roland said. “I tried it for a year when I got out of college, but I was miserable. I raced all through school; I had the bug. I couldn’t sit in an office anymore, so I quit. When Running Aces opened, it was five hours from home, I decided that was what I was going to do.”

Nick Roland enjoyed a record-setting 2020 season. He set career highs for starts with 830, wins with 186, and purses with $990,728. Dee Leftwich photo.

Roland enjoyed a record-setting 2020 season. He set career highs for starts with 830, wins with 186, and purses with $990,728. Among the highlights, he was the leading driver at Running Aces and set a record by winning five of the 12 divisional championships for Minnesota-sired horses.

He also finished third in wins last year at Cal Expo, where he has competed since 2017.

“It was kind of the first year that I raced pretty much the whole year,” Roland said. “And we were really fortunate, we had a lot of good young horses and I got to drive a lot of good young horses in Minnesota, especially in the finals. It was a very good year.”

Currently, Roland is second in the driver standings at Cal Expo’s winter/spring meet, which concludes in late April, and ranks third in the trainer standings. He is planning a schedule similar to 2020, alternating between California and Minnesota with a stable of 30 horses.

Eight horses in the stable are 2-year-olds.

“I always enjoy the young horses the most,” Roland said. “I really appreciate our old warhorses, but it’s just really rewarding to raise or buy a yearling and develop it and have it turn into, maybe not even a champion, but a good horse that is 1-2-3 and can compete at the highest level in their class every week. That’s the most rewarding thing for me.”