by Ellen Harvey, Harness Racing Communications

This column is a replay of one that ran three years ago. With the news today that trainer/driver Joe Pavia, Jr. will be out for approximately six weeks with a fractured arm, this message is an important one, so perhaps the message herein bears repeating.

Freehold, NJ — Like most big sisters, I try to look out for my little brother. I interpreted his baby talk for our parents and wrote his thank you notes until he was old enough to grab a crayon and do it himself. I made sure he had his mittens on when we played outside.

A few decades later, I’m still looking out for him and he doesn’t even know it. Until now, that is. Leo’s got a stable full of horses at The Meadows, a wife that’s a computer programmer and two tow-headed, brilliant boys, 14 and 10.

If he fell down the stairs and broke his leg, there’s no one to take care of his horses.

Recently, a horse he was jogging saw a small herd of deer on the track before he did. After the equine equivalent of a double half-twisting back spin, Leo was out of the driver’s seat. This time, he didn’t break or tear anything, but maybe next time he won’t be so lucky.

While I’m still willing to make sure he’s got his mittens on, I can’t train his horses, so I did the next best thing — bought him a disability insurance policy through the USTA.

The best kept secret in the Standardbred industry is the disability and accidental death or dismemberment insurance available to every one of the 8,300 people who have a USTA trainer or driver license. For $96 a year, you can get a policy that pays $300/week if you’re laid up and can’t take care of your horses. I realize everyone in the horse business is an optimist of the highest order, but I’ve donated to enough benefits to know people in this sport get hurt regularly.

With this policy, it doesn’t matter if you’re kicked/dumped/bitten/cracked up in a racing accident or you trip on your kid’s skateboard while tiptoeing out of the house at 5:00 a.m. – you’re covered. Not only that, if you die in the process, your beneficiary gets $100,000. Not that I’m trying to encourage anyone in that direction, but betting $96 at very long odds with a $100,000 payout is a good deal.

For slightly more money, you can get a policy that will pay $500 per week while you’re temporarily disabled and $250,000 if you’re in to go at Pearly Gate Downs.

Vicki Hill of the Van Gundy Agency vhill@vangundy.com, (309-452-1156), who administers the policy for the USTA, tells me only a tiny fraction of the people eligible for the insurance buy it. In a sport rife with the possibility of injury every minute, that’s just dumb. Assuming you get through a lifetime of training or driving a horse without breaking something and end up on the couch watching “Days Of Our Lives,” there are plenty of other accidents that can happen and they’re covered, too.

Everyone with a USTA driver or trainer license already has a minimal policy, providing $25 a week for 26 weeks for temporary disability or $5,000 in case of accidental death or dismemberment. That costs $5 and it was rolled in to the price of getting a license a few years back. The disability policy will have a secure future only if a sufficiently large pool of people get in it.

Insurance companies can read past performance lines, too. If they’ve got only a few of the most accident-prone people in the sport signed up, they won’t make this bet much longer. And it will be a great loss.

Much as I love my brother, I couldn’t afford to buy a policy like this for him if I walked into an insurance agency and neither could most people in the sport.

Since this column was originally written, the cost of the policy has increased slightly, though the benefits have remained the same. The primary policy is $115 a year and the policy for increased coverage is $288. Leo Harvey now pays for his own insurance and his family is thankful he has not needed it in the ensuing years. His sons are now 14 and 17, and they are still brilliant. — Ellen Harvey