by Gregg Keidel, director of racing, Running Aces Harness Park

Columbus, MN — It was a fitting end to the inaugural season at Running Aces on Sunday afternoon, July 6, with eight different drivers and eight different trainers notching victories on the eight race, 53rd and final program for 2008.

The 19-year-old phenom John DeLong captured the drivers’ dash title by a wide margin with 76 wins, but the conditioner’s title went right down to the last race, one that included an extremely ironic twist.

Duane Miller and Justin Anfinson entered the final card tied with 38 triumphs each from their stables and each had horses entered in four races on Sunday. Because the trainers’ colony at Running Aces was so competitive in year one, neither of the two top trainers had recorded a win through race seven. In the eighth and final dash of the year Miller was actually driving for Anfinson for the first time all season. As fate would have it, Miller put Anfinson’s Daria’s La Bamba, a 4-1 third choice in the betting, on the engine and cruised to a wire-to-wire, 1:58 score, giving the trainer the title with 39 wins and relegating the driver to second in the trainer standings.

“I’ll be able to tell people I came so close to winning a trainer’s title, except that I won it for the other guy!,” laughed the good-natured Miller after the race. Anfinson, just 20 years of age, is a native Minnesotan who made 228 starts at the meet, most of any trainer. DeLong and Anfinson most likely combined for the youngest dash-winning driver and trainer combo at any track in history.

In all, 20 trainers managed 10 or more wins at Running Aces, seven more than the 13 drivers who accomplished the same feat.

Fastest mile on the closing program belonged to The Gangster N, an 11-year-old who scorched the track in 1:53.4, just two ticks off the track record, in a $2,000 claiming pace. Ken Holliday, a leading driver at Buffalo Raceway and winner of nearly 5,000 career races, was in the sulky. He was in Minnesota to pick up his daughter, Ashley, Running Aces’ popular outrider during the inaugural season, after the final race.

Total purses for the three-month, first-ever meet at Running Aces were $1,048,400 for an average of $2,461 per race. With the 50-table cardroom casino at Running Aces now operational, and the purse account benefitting by approximately 15 percent of the net profits, purses are expected to be close to double in the second season in 2009.