by Rich Fisher, USTA Web Newsroom Senior Correspondent

Rich Fisher

Trenton, NJ — Rather than feel bitter that his career year got cut short by injury, Nick Roland chooses to celebrate the fact he could enjoy his greatest season before injury struck.

Entering a Sept. 22 race in Cannon Falls, Minn., Roland had already set career marks as a driver with 140 wins and $545,764 in purse earnings, and as a trainer with 60 wins and $305,818 in earnings.

He was the leading driver and trainer at Running Aces in Minnesota with 113 and 43 wins, respectively, and became the first driver in Running Aces’ five-year history to win 100 races in one season.

Nationally, he was the leading driver in UDR (.437) among drivers with 300-499 starts.

Susan Schroeder photo

Nick Roland set career marks as both a driver and trainer in 2012.

But it came to a sudden halt in Cannon Falls when an accident left Roland with a broken right collarbone and a concussion. And while the 30-year-old Grinnell, Iowa resident is doing fine now, he decided to shut down driving for the season.

What he didn’t decide to do was feel sorry for himself.

“It was frustrating,” Roland said. “But if anything, I would say the success I had during this year made it easier to be able to kind of take a break and sit back and let it heal.

“I would say it was the opposite for me. Rather than be upset, I’m thankful for having this much success already and feel pretty blessed to have had the opportunity I’ve had already. I only drove from May until September, so to win 140 races, I appreciate that. It would have been harder for me to stomach to be sidelined and not had that success.”

It wasn’t overnight success, however, as Roland won Iowa harness racing’s top driver title on the state’s county fair tracks three times by age 26. It’s not surprising considering he is a fifth-generation horseman.

According to a 2009 story written by Mary Lou Lawless with Roland’s mom, Lesa Peters, Nick’s great-great grandfather (on Lesa’s side) was harness horseman Robert Carey. His great-grandfather Royce “Red” Carey won the USTA Driving Achievement Award in 1961 and is in the Iowa Harness Racing Hall of Fame.

Lawless wrote that Lesa and her husband, Royal Roland, were racing horses at Quad City Downs in Illinois in 1982 when Lesa — a registered nurse — was 7-1/2 months pregnant with Nick. After a victory, she jogged to the winner’s circle for the photo, rode back to the barn on the race bike and cared for the winning horse in the detention barn.

Nick was born the next day, over a month early, which was a sign of things to come as he is frequently ahead of the game.

Roland won his first race at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia in 1998, and has been going strong since. He is consistently among the UDR leaders and, aside from suffering a left collarbone injury six years ago — which was not as severe as his latest mishap — has enjoyed a relatively injury-free career.

After the Minnesota mishap, there was more concern about the collarbone — which was broken in half — than the concussion. But the concussion had some short-term effects.

“It was kind of weird,” he said. “I didn’t even realize how out of it I was. I was just drawing a blank and my mind was just scattered and everywhere. I took the rest of that afternoon and probably the next day before I had all my thoughts collected again.”

Roland was alert enough to understand his collarbone was in bad shape. He got the break sealed and began feeling better while healing at home.

“I wasn’t going to follow up,” Nick said. “But my mother works in an emergency room and she made an appointment and told me to get my butt in there. So I went in and they said it was healing by itself.”

Thus, Roland avoided surgery, but he still had to deal with plenty of discomfort as he opted for over-the-counter pain pills rather than prescribed pain medicine.

“They always bothered my stomach; I’d never been a fan,” he said. “It was hard. It was tough to get comfortable sleeping. It was hard to rest and it took a while to get where I could even co-pilot at all, let alone drive and train.”

Things are slowly returning to normal. Roland estimates he is 95 percent healthy and is back jogging and training. He is reluctantly staying out of the race bike.

“We raced a few of our horses out at Saratoga,” Nick said. “I’d driven there before and really liked the place. It killed me not to be able to drive my own horses.

“But I’m feeling well enough now, that if we were somewhere racing, I could drive.”

He is still keeping busy with his brother, Will, in operating the family business.

“Between my brother and I we’ve got 10 (horses) and my grandparents and uncle have 14 they need a bit of help with,” Roland said. “We’ve got 24 babies that we’re going with, there’s plenty to do. I’ll probably just stay here.

“We’ve either sold or placed all our racehorses. And with Grinnell being five hours from Chicago I’ll probably just stay home and get these babies ready for the summer.”

Although he is unsure of the amount, Roland has caught wind that a collection was being taken up by other drivers to help curtail his medical costs.

“I’m not sure what happened with that,” he said with a laugh. “I guess I’ll find out.”

It would only be fitting, since Roland donated $1,750 to good friend and fellow driver Adam Hauser after he was involved in an accident in Minnesota. Many of the drivers and trainers pledged five percent of their earnings from races on a specified night and Nick had such a successful evening that his donation covered nearly half the money collected.

Whatever he gets from his fellow drivers/trainers, it will be a marked contrast to Roland’s life. Nick isn’t big on handouts, as he paid for his entire college education at Buena Vista University in Iowa with race earnings.

Pensive Photography

Restless Yankee and driver Nick Roland cruised to a 1:51.2 all-time, all-age track record this past summer at Running Aces.

“I got lucky,” said Roland, who has a degree in business management. “The first horse my grandfather bought me. I only made a few hundred, I saved that up. The next one I bought, I made a few thousand with and just kept kind of trading up. I made enough to pay for four years of school and never had to get a loan, and my dad never had to pay any tuition. I just kind of got lucky and found some horses that I got reasonably and they ended up being pretty good.”

So far, none were better than this past year, in which Roland drove pacer Restless Yankee to the Running Aces track record (1:51.2) and drove Fiftyonefifty to the 3-year-old pacing filly track mark (1:53.2).

“The whole summer up there was just amazing,” he said. “Everything kind of fell into place. Some of the time, I just thought I couldn’t get beat.”

After a winter of working with yearlings, Roland plans on returning to Running Aces next season.

“Hopefully,” he said, “if they turn out anywhere near where we were this year, I’ll be happy.”

He’s happy now, which sure beats feeling bitter.