by Dean A. Hoffman

The numbers are impressive, but a bit confusing.

He won 126 races.

He finished in the first three 176 times in 199 starts.

He won 63 percent of his starts.

He paced in 1:57.1h.

He earned $57,650.

Yes, that means that he earned $289.69 per start.

Photos courtesy of Art Snell and Beth Dale

Trainer Art Snell and Bestdealintown in 1999.

Those numbers are more than enough to win a place in the Minnesota Harness Racing Hall of Fame for the pacer Bestdealintown, now 21 years old.

Long before he won a place in the Hall of Fame, this tough old gelding won a place in the hearts of horsemen and racing fans in the Upper Midwest.

He won their hearts because he was a fixture at the fairs year after year and he usually found a way to win.

Bestdealintown was bred by Charlie Petrowitz of Mauston, Wisconsin and was owned through most of his career by a farmer named Jerry Kaercher of Cavalier, North Dakota. That’s about ten miles from the Manitoba border and you’ll find a lot more combines than jog carts in that part of the country.

The saga started in 1990 when Kaercher wanted to buy a horse. He picked up a renegade 4-year-old gelding called Bestdealintown at Assiniboia Downs. He asked his friend Art Snell if he’d train the horse. Snell initially thought it was a joke.

“I don’t know anything about training racehorses,” he told his friend. Kaercher persisted, saying that Snell had trained pleasure horses and barrel racers for him. It didn’t matter if he didn’t know much about racehorses.

Art Snell liked horses and spent his summers with them. In the long winters on the North Dakota – Manitoba border, he worked in a Ford garage.

“I’m a flunky,” he told me at the time. “I run the wrecker, wash vehicles, just do anything.”

Snell knew enough to tame this outlaw pacer and get him to the races. In fact, Bestdealintown won his first 10 races for his new connections. Still, that earned the horse only $1,923 in the paltry purses of the Upper Midwest.

Snell didn’t drive his pacer for the simple reason that he didn’t have a license. Bestdealintown won 25 of 31 starts in 1991-92, but only three of 13 in 1993. Snell figured that rather than worry about the drives his horse was getting, he’d just get a license himself and try his luck.

His luck was pretty darn good. Bestdealintown was unbeaten in 13 races in 1994. Then he cooled off a bit. Over the next three seasons, Bestdealintown “only” won 59 of his 72 starts.

Art Snell may have been an amateur in the racing game, but he sure had the confidence of the owner.

“If I had a horse worth a million dollars, Art would be my trainer,” said Kaercher.

Other drivers teamed up to try to beat Bestdealintown, usually unsuccessfully. This horse simply had a nose for the finish line.

Linda Werkheiser, a familiar face at fairs in the Upper Midwest for years, said, “With Bestdeal, the race isn’t over until it’s over. There are days when you think he just doesn’t have it, yet he still wins. He can be in front and you think they’ll pass him, but he goes just enough to win.”

Popular announcer George “Woody” Woodbridge said during the horse’s career, “He’s a hero in our neck of the woods. People look forward to seeing him race. They feel bad when he gets beat.”

Fortunately, that didn’t happen too often.