Trenton, NJ — It’s safe to say William Carter is a tad ahead of where he thought he would be at this point in his career.
“A hundred percent,” the 20-year-old Maryland driver said. “I didn’t know where I’d be. I thought I might still be cleaning stalls at this time.”
Rather than cleaning stalls, he’s cleaning up to the tune of over $1.1 million in purse earnings through 1,114 starts this season.
Carter is good at underestimating, as witnessed by his pre-season goal this year.
“I really wanted to have a hundred-win season, but at the beginning of the year I said ‘Ah, that’s probably not realistic,’ so I thought 75 would be more realistic,” he said. “I had 75 by June.”
And he had nearly twice as many entering November with 146 firsts, 145 seconds and 120 thirds. His biggest win came Oct. 27 when Carter drove Caviart Farms’ Caviart Ainsley to victory in the $87,600 Virginia Breeder’s 3-year-old filly pace title match at Shenandoah Downs.
“It was my biggest win to date,” he said. “Two weeks after I turned 19 I won a Maryland Sires Stakes for $85,000 (with Rusty’s Baby Ruth at Ocean Downs) and this one I won for $87,600.”
Carter drove the Tony Alagna-trained filly within a fifth of a second of her 1:55 previous best set at Pocono.
“I left out of the gate, I dropped in third and a horse tried to brush through the front and got parked so I pulled second over,” Carter said. “Going down the backside the horse from the two-hole stopped, the horse that was parked dropped in. That’s when I started after her and we started to race down the stretch a little bit. I think it was for half a length.
“I drove that horse in the elimination and finished second. So I thought I maybe had a shot.”
It was the first time Carter drove for Alagna. He got assistance from his dad, veteran horseman Billy Carter, who spoke with Alagna assistant Anibal Borjas.
“He said to Anibal, ‘If you’ve got any drives, give my son a shot,’ and they did,” Carter said. “It was nice because you know the horse is going to be at the track ready to go. I actually never even talked to Tony. Anibal just said, ‘Go drive the horse, it’s a nice horse to drive.’”
Billy Carter began helping his son at an early age. Growing up in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, William played middle school baseball and basketball. Like most boys growing up in the City of Brotherly Love, he became a rabid Philadelphia sports fan and thus, learned to endure heartbreak.
“It’s the same thing every year,” he said. “The Sixers always lose in the second round, the Eagles always have a thousand injuries and they fall off, the Phillies are the Phillies. At the middle of the season they’re the number one team in MLB and then they fall off.”
When it was jokingly suggested he not let the negativity of his teams affect his driving, Carter said, “A few years ago when I was really big into the Eagles that could have happened. But I’m not as big into sports anymore.”
Unless it’s the sport of harness racing, which he began getting involved with during the summer of seventh grade.
“My dad said to start coming to the barn with him,” Carter said. “That’s when I fell in love with it. I would clean out stalls and he taught me to put a harness on just to jog, and eventually he let me drive one.
“When I was real young he had me driving on his lap. The first time I drove by myself I remember I was just real nervous.”
He got over those nerves quickly as he absorbed his dad’s massive encyclopedia of knowledge.
“He pretty much told me everything; from what to do right, what can go wrong,” Carter said. “He always gives me pointers, he would be there for me if I ever needed him. Without him I wouldn’t be in the business to begin with.”
William worked in his dad’s Pennsylvania stable, and would warm up horses at Chester. Upon turning 18, he went down to Maryland.
“He wanted me to learn to drive down here, because I would have a better opportunity than up there,” Carter said.
His first drives came in 2021, when won two races and nearly $8,000 in purses. The following season he won nine races and over $52,000. Last year showed marked improvement with 53 wins and over $518,000 in earnings, and this year he has exploded driving mainly at Rosecroft and Ocean Downs.
“It all starts with my dad,” Carter said. “He’s the one who puts my name out there and he’s given me some driving starts. Toward the end of last year I started driving for a guy named Basil Sapienza, he started putting me down and it started off right near the end of the meet last winter. I started driving five or six a night.”
In assessing his breakthrough 2024 campaign, Carter credits a few factors.
“The biggest thing is I have more experience now than I did last year and I started getting better horses to drive,” he said. “Instead of every race where I was maybe 20-1, I started driving more favorites and I started getting more confidence.”
Carter feels he has developed more patience in his driving, but noted that he will go on the attack at times.
“It depends on the day,” he said. “Some days I’ll be aggressive, other days I’ll be more laid back. I’m probably more on the laid back side. It depends on the race and the horse.”
Along with his dad and Sapienza, Carter credits George Dent, Roger Plante and Bryson Dunning as big influences.
“Bryson is pretty much my best friend,” he said. “I’ve known him for years. He has a kind of big stable and gives me a lot of drives in Maryland and Virginia.”
Aside from driving, Carter has won 30 lifetime races and nearly $197,000 as a trainer. But his 70 training starts this year are half of what they were in 2023.
“For a little while I would train a couple in Maryland, and once I started driving every day I said ‘I can’t train anymore,’” he said. “I was all over the place driving so my dad took over the training full time.”
Asked if his training career is over, Carter said, “Yeah, for now anyway.”
Like most young drivers, William’s biggest goal is to get more steady drives from top-flight trainers. But he is certainly happy with where he is now.
“It’s been a real pleasant surprise,” Carter said. “I’m just taking it one day at a time and I’ll look back on it at the end of the year. Driving is something I always wanted to do ever since I was little. It’s just my dream. You get a big rush and a big thrill out of it, and it doesn’t get old.”