Heads up at Hanover
November 9, 2016,by Ellen Harvey, Harness Racing Communications
Harrisburg, PA — Mindful of those possibilities, Hanover Shoe Farms staff members this year are sporting a new accessory to their usual orange and blue attire — helmets.
Dr. Bridgette Jablonsky, Farm Manager at Hanover, says the helmets are provided to any employee handling yearlings.
USTA/Ellen Harvey photo
Hanover Shoe Farms staff now have the option to wear a farm-provided helmet when working with young horses.
“We give them the option,” she says. “If they want to wear one, we provide it. We can’t make it mandatory, but I highly suggest it and I would say about 75 percent of our staff wear it — with yearlings, not the broodmares.
“(They wear them) when they’re showing yearlings, or walking yearlings to the exercise machine or at the farm, too. Especially the colts — when the colts get scared their first reaction is to rear and strike (stand on hind legs and kick out with their front feet). Fillies not so much, but a colt will rear and strike very quickly.
“Even the well behaved ones, something scares them and they rear and strike. I tell them, you only have one head; you might as well protect it. We just started it with this year’s yearlings, when they came in to the fairgrounds. We’ve had some that grazed the helmets (with their hooves) and we had some (staff) that even if the horse head butts them, they say it hurts much less with the helmet on.
“I anticipate that next year, there will be some other consigners that use them. I think it will catch on.”
Tim Hayes, who helps supervise horse-handling staff at Hanover is a proponent of the change.
“It’s good. I got struck last year here (pointing to a spot on his head). I got the perfect hoof print. I was just about knocked out. You only have one head and if you handle horses long enough, you get hurt. I wear it when I’m showing or leading to the walker. We started this when we brought the first yearlings in for the Ohio sale, about 16 weeks ago. The guys in the stud barns, they wear them with a couple of the studs that have a tendency to strike.”
- Swedish-born Lucas Wallin opens his own stable (Thursday, November 10, 2016)
Lucas Wallin knows he still has a lot to learn about training racehorses. But at the age of only 23, he says with a laugh, “I have a couple of years to learn everything.” Wallin, who worked for trainer Ake Svanstedt for more than two years after arriving in the U.S. from Sweden in 2014, recently started his own harness racing stable. He is based in New Egypt, N.J., and is in the process of assembling horses for his barn. On Wednesday, he added three to his roster with the purchases of Chapter Seven-sired trotting colt Dont Press Send, Explosive Matter-sired trotting filly Winbak Noelle and Conway Hall-sired trotting colt Handsome Devil at the Standardbred Horse Sale.