by Larry Acker

Editor’s Note: Last week at the Wayne County Fair in Wooster, Ohio, the 12-year-old trotting gelding Dunkster 1:53.3 ($894,320) was retired. Below is the copy that was read at his retirement ceremony.

A very special local horse retires from racing today: the outstanding trotter, Dunkster. He holds the trotting track record here of 1:57.3, set on September 11, 2003, when he was four years old.

This horse can be counted as one of Ohio’s greatest trotting horses and is owned by Wooster native Dean Davis and trained locally by Kurt Sugg. Dean Davis hired trainer Kurt Sugg in 1995 and brought him to Wooster where they set-up a racing stable at the Wayne County Fairgrounds.

Together, horses owned by Davis and trained by Sugg have started in 2,708 races, won 521 times, had 373 seconds and 352 thirds and made $3,709,513. However, both agree that Dunkster is the best racehorse they have raced together over the last 16 years.

USTA/Ed Keys photo

Dunkster earned $894,320 in his brilliant career.

Dunkster’s racing career started in Ohio in 2001 at the age of two and has lasted a phenomenal ten years. Over the course of his career his reputation and fame has grown far beyond fair racing, the borders of Wayne County, and Ohio. He has competed at the highest levels in the sport and has had the uncanny ability to race in the upper class races for most of his career. Like a fine wine, he only got better with age.

In his lifetime, Dunkster has raced at ten different Ohio fair tracks and won on eight of them, and raced at 17 pari-mutuel tracks in 10 different states and won races at 14 racetracks in nine states. Dunkster took his lifetime record of 1:53.3 at age eight on the mile track at Balmoral Park in Illinois.

He became a World Champion and holds the world record for older trotting geldings on a half-mile track by winning at Northfield Park in 1:54.2 on May 10, 2004. By virtue of his world record performance, Dunkster is the trotting track record holder at Northfield Park and also holds the older trotting track record at Lebanon Raceway for trotting in 1:57 in 2003.

Dunkster is so well respected in Illinois that Hawthorne Race Course sponsored a series of trotting races that were named in his honor.

He raced 287 times, racking up 89 wins, 42 seconds and 31 thirds. He earned an astounding $894,320 over the course of his career, which ranks him fourth among all-time Ohio-bred leading money winning trotters.

Racing excellence is not always marked just by the number of wins a horse racked up, or the amount of money won, but by the determination to compete, and the commitment to finish every race.

Dunkster always gave the best effort he had every time he stepped onto a racetrack. No horse could race as fast, or as long, as Dunkster has over the course of his career without the desire to race and the unending support from his owner and trainer-driver.

Dean Davis and Kurt Sugg have always made room in the horse’s racing schedule to race Dunkster at Wooster when they could have taken the horse to other racetracks with bigger purses, so we thank Dean and Kurt for giving the people of Wayne County many opportunities over the years to watch this famous and talented trotter race right here in Wooster.

Please give this horse a big round of applause as you are looking at a World Champion racehorse. He retires as one of the fastest and richest Ohio-bred male trotters in the history of Ohio harness horse racing and is the fastest trotting horse that was ever stabled and trained at the Wayne County Fairgrounds.