by Karsten Bonsdorf, USTA web newsroom correspondent

Peter Gerry is going to have his Hippodrome Paris-Vincennes debut on Saturday (Jan. 26), as he has been assigned as the driver for the French trotter Quoriace Stop in the Prix de Saint Claude.

The Prix de Saint Claude is a race for amateur drivers. Although the box does not close until Thursday, it’s certain that Quoriace Stop and Peter Gerry will be among the 18 starters.

The distance of the race is 1-5/16th miles and the total purse is $18,000.

Quoriace Stop is a 9-year-old trotter trained by Swedish born Anders Lindquist, who runs a stable at the world renowned training center Grosbois, outside Paris.

This will be Gerry’s first drive at Paris-Vincennes although he drove at several tracks in France in 1990 and at European venues in Italy, Sweden and Hungary.

Gerry is trustee/treasurer of the Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame, treasurer/director of the Delvin Miller Harness Drivers Association, administrators of the C.K.G. Billings Series, and vice president/trustee of the Standardbred Retirement Foundation. He formerly served as treasurer and director of the Hambletonian Society, as chairman of the New Jersey Sires Stakes and as a trustee of the Harness Horse Youth Foundation.

Gerry has competed passionately in each of the 31 editions of the Billings Series since its founding in 1982. From 1991 until 2010, he served as president of the Delvin Miller Harness Drivers Association. During that period he grew the Billings Series membership from 10 members to a high of 150 members in 2006. In addition he instituted the Delvin Miller Harness Drivers Championship Gold and Silver Cup races, contested annually for purses of $25,000 and $15,000, respectively.

He has been driving competitively since 1973 and before that competed in matinees contested at the old training track at Pompano Park. He has directly owned horses since 1971. In 1985, Gerry became a partner in the Arden Homestead Stable that was the sole owner of Kick Tail (third in the 1998 Hambletonian) and was an owner of Deweycheatumnhowe as a 2- and 3-year-old (when he won the 2008 Hambletonian). Arden Homestead also owned The Chancellor (fourth in the 2009 Hambletonian) and Cassis, winner of the fastest elimination of the 2010 Hambletonian.

As a driver, Gerry won the first edition of the Delvin Miller Memorial Driving Championship Gold Cup, contested at Freehold Raceway in November 1993, driving Crown Roast.

A graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Business School, Gerry is the managing partner of Sycamore Ventures, a Princeton, N.J., based private equity and venture capital investment firm he co-founded in 1995. Prior to starting Sycamore, he served for 11 years as president of Citicorp Venture Capital, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Citigroup where he had been employed for 23 years.

— Thomas Hicks also contributed to this report