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Catching Up With . . .
Stanley Dancer, Master Driver
August 5, 1968
Posted: Tue September 8, 1998
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(Walter Iooss Jr.)
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Stanley
Dancer had to get out of the sulky for good two years ago,
bringing to a close the greatest driving career in the
history of harness racing. An operation in 1973, followed
by others in '96 and '97, repaired damage done by 51 years
of hard riding and 32
on-track accidents, but because surgeons removed portions of four
lumbar and six cervical vertebrae, Dancer was told it was
no longer safe for him to drive. "It could have been
worse," says Dancer, who in his most serious mishap
was trampled in '54 by five
horses at Yonkers Raceway, leaving his right arm immobile for
several days. "Accidents and injuries are part of
sports. I really had a great
career."
The 71-year-old Dancer ruled his sport from a seat behind
some of the finest trotters and pacers of all time. He is
the only driver to win Triple Crowns with three horses:
trotters Nevele Pride
(pictured on the cover) in 1968 and Super Bowl in '72, and pacer Most Happy Fella
in '70. Dancer was also the first
driver to win
$1 million in purses in a year, in '64, and was the first to
drive a horse to
$1 million in career earnings, Cardigan Bay four years later.
He won 3,781 races and more than
$28 million and came in first in trotting's biggest race, the
Hambletonian, four times with horses he also trained. Along
the way Dancer became his sport's ambassador, racing his
horses against people, antique cars and the Batmobile, and
appearing with them
on everything from
The Ed Sullivan
Show to
Mission
Impossible to
The Price Is
Right.
(Bill Frakes)
| | "I did everything I could have possibly done with an
eighth-grade education," says Dancer, who trained
nearly every horse he drove. "I went to the White
House. I played baseball [in a celebrity game] at Veterans
Stadium. I went all around the
world."
After winning his last Hambletonian, in 1983, Dancer
continued to train and drive at the highest levels for
seven years, after which the cumulative effect of his
injuries forced him to scale back his workload. He was
training only a few horses for two
of his friends, former New York Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford
and team owner George Steinbrenner, when he was diagnosed
with prostate cancer last November. He never stopped
working while receiving radiation treatments at a hospital
near his home in Pompano
Beach, Fla., where he lives with his second wife, Jody. In
August he completed the treatments, and doctors have told
him he can return to training full time next month. He'll
start out with only two
horses, but, as Dancer points out, "It only takes one
to get the
Hambletonian."
—Mark
Beech
Issue date: September 21, 1998
Past Editions of Catching Up With...
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