by Rich Fisher, USTA Web Newsroom Senior Correspondent

Rich Fisher

Trenton, NJ — When does a person’s first driving win get overshadowed by the second? How about when their fingerprints are found on every aspect of the second.

That was the case for Ohio’s Emily Hay, whose first victory in the sulky was great, but her second was elevated to downright awesome. In fact, it caused memory loss.

“It was an emotional moment; I was so excited I passed the vet,” Hay said with a laugh. “They were like ‘Hey you have to turn around and come back!’ I was like ‘Whoops, sorry, my bad.’ We were like all hopping and skipping and ‘Yay!’ It was a really good night.”

What made it so special was, unlike her first driving win when she was behind someone else’s horse, this was the first time she was in the winning bike with a horse she also owned and trained. She scored in 2:01.4 with the 12-year-old pacing gelding Touch And Go at the Wilmington, Ohio fair.

Emily Hay had a memorable win with Touch And Go at the Wilmington, Ohio fair.

“I don’t even know how to explain that one,” she said. “The kids were there (Colton, 4 and Gavin, 8); my friend said when I came across the finish line the kids knew that I won and just took off on the track yelling ‘We won! We won!’

“Somebody had to get them off the track on the golf cart. You weren’t stopping them. They were going to the winner’s circle. When they got there they hopped on the bike and somebody had given Colton a goldfish so he’s sitting on the bike with a goldfish. It was great.”

As usual, Colton grabbed his mom’s whip when it was over.

“There aren’t many who can say that their favorite fan is their son,” Hay noted.

Her driving career began in 2012 and she was winless in 42 races entering this season. Ironically, just shy of age 42, she started winning.

“Maybe that’s my lucky number, maybe I should play that,” she said.

Hay entered the 2017 campaign with three wins as a trainer and she has equaled that mark with three wins this year. The first win this year came when Tyler Smith drove Touch And Go — a horse Emily owned and trained — to victory at Hoosier Park on April 6.

“Everybody at Hoosier could probably hear me down in the winner’s circle hollering,” Hay said of the April 6 victory. “It’s a little more exciting as the trainer because that’s the hard work you put into that horse, you can see your hard work paying off.”

She got another one on June 7 when Sam Widger drove Royal Delta to a victory at Hoosier Park.

The first driving win came 13 days later. Hay went to an Ohio Ladies Pace event in Ottawa, Ohio and was looking for a horse to drive. She ran into her trainer friend, Tricia Shepard, who put Emily behind her horse, Mr I Am.

Conrad photos

Emily Hay’s first driving win came behind Mr I Am at the Ottawa, Ohio fair.

Hay took it as a good omen that Shepard’s colors and her own were both purple.

“It all kind of matched and they bring his own bike,” Hay said.

Another irony is that a few years earlier Emily actually sat at the same banquet table with the horse’s owners when Mr I Am was honored as a 3-year-old fair circuit winner.

“He’s just a fabulous horse,” Hay said. “He’s real easy going. He knows the track. They told me he’s good on the half-mile track. They said get him to the gate, he’ll come right out of the gate and that’s what I did.”

Mr I Am took the early lead and never gave it up despite being challenged throughout the race.

“A horse would come up and he would just go faster,” Hay said. “He kind of like graded his own mile. I just knew if I felt somebody coming at me, I could just ask him a little bit and he would go. We led the whole mile of the race.

“It’s like one of those horses, they feel a horse coming up behind them and beside them and they speed up a little bit. He was very good. I was nervous because you’re on someone else’s horse and you don’t know it as well as you know your own. But he had it in his mind he was gone, and he was gone.”

And it was Emily gone wild as she came across the finish line in 2:00 with the 8-year-old pacing gelding.

“Oh my gosh, I started crying,” she said. “Even talking about it you still kind of get choked up. My little boy and our niece were there. A couple of other people were there, they didn’t know whether they should get in the winner’s circle. I’m like ‘Whenever I get in the winner’s circle everybody get in there!’ because I don’t get in there that often. And I worked hard for this one, so everybody was welcome. I was excited, I started crying a little bit, they let me have the blanket so we have it hanging up in the house. It was a really neat experience.”

It got even better 20 days later. On July 10 in another Ladies Pace event at Wilmington, Hay was driving Touch And Go. Climbing in the bike she admitted to being nervous, but only because, “I always get nervous. I’m a nervous wreck sometimes. I guess it’s good, because they always say if it’s too much like a job it’s not fun.”

It turned out those nerves were unnecessary.

“I knew this horse was good on the half,” Emily said. “We were coming around, he was pulling a little bit, he wanted to go and I thought ‘I don’t know, we may be pulling too early.’ As soon as we pulled him, he got out and won by seven lengths. He was fired up and ready to go.”

So was Hay and her family.

“That was awesome, because that was my horse,” she said. “I own it, I train it. The kids were there so everybody got in the pictures. That was pretty awesome.”

Hay is one of the more unlikely Standardbred participants one is likely to come across. Her fulltime job is at a hospital lab as a phlebotomist — someone who takes blood and then studies the samples and logs them into medical records.

She also owned saddle horses at her Celina, Ohio, home. So naturally, she came home one day to find a note on her door from a neighbor, who was giving Emily a Standardbred horse that the neighbor’s boss was trying to get rid of.

“I find this note ‘Here’s this horse,’ and I had no clue, I was just like ‘Yeah, sure,’” she said.

Hay called her friend Bobby Werner, who knew something about racing horses. The conversation never picked up much traction.

“I said ‘Hey these people have a racehorse,’” she said. “And he said, ‘What is it?’ and I said, ‘It’s a racehorse?’ and he said, ‘Is it a pacer or a trotter?’ and I said, ‘It’s a racehorse.’ I didn’t know.”

Werner looked at the horse — named Aloha Kelly but called Joe by Emily — and they decided he was wasn’t big enough for big tracks so they entered him in fairs. The 7-year-old pacing gelding gave Hay her first win as a trainer on June 12, 2013 at the Paulding Fair.

That was Aloha Kelly’s last hurrah as he is now a pleasure horse, but Emily got the bug.

She now owns two horses — 5-year-old pacing mare Royal Delta and 7-year-old pacing gelding Tymal Torch, who is just getting back in racing shape. Touch And Go was sold back to the original owner earlier this month.

Hay said that two horses are enough to deal with considering she also has a fulltime job. She now refuses to let one of her own horses race unless she’s driving it.

“I don’t want them to win if I’m not there,” she said, while inventing a new word. “I’m superstitiousy that way.”

Her future plans are to continue to drive in the Ladies Pace races although she finds it a little less painful driving against the men.

“It’s a little bit easier racing with the guys than it is the girls because they’re a little bit nicer,” Hay said with a laugh. “The girls will pretty much park you every day. Racing in the Ladies Pace, people don’t realize how tough of a class that is. It’s a very tough class.”

Off the track, it’s a different story.

“It’s funny when you’re off the racetrack it’s like we’re friends, but on the racetrack we’re out here to race,” she said. “Off the racetrack, it’s ‘hey let’s go get some ice cream, I’m buying.’ It’s tough but it’s fun, and everyone gets along, that makes it even better.”