The great Swedish coldblood trotter Jarvsofaks recently won his 184th race, passing the record established in the 1990s by the legendary Norwegian coldblood Alm Svarten.
The career of Jarvsofaks is simply unbelievable because he's only started 210 times in his life. And he's not done yet. Swedish rules allow him to compete at age 15 and he's got a decent shot of reaching 200 wins by the end of 2009.
In 2008, he won 12 of his 14 starts with one second. In 2007, he won 19 of his 22 starts with two seconds. In 2006 at age 12, he ran the table, scoring 22 wins in 22 starts.
If he raced often enough in 2009 and maintained his form, he could win 16 races to put him at 200 wins in his career.
Hey, but don't you think I'm asking a bit much of the old guy? He's now 15 and he's been at the races since 1996 when Continentalvictory won the Hambletonian. He was foaled the same year as Malabar Man, Lord Stormont, and Western Dreamer and you don't see them still pounding the racetrack.
Jarvsofaks was foaled on June 23, 1994 and made his debut just past his second birthday on July 16, 1996. True, he only raced twice that year, but he's been racing every year since. He must have legs of steel and the heart of a warrior. He obviously loves to race and loves to win because he just keeps on doing it.
In the process, he's made his breeder-owner-trainer-driver Jan-Olov Persson a rich man as the horse's racetrack earnings now exceed $3.1 million in Canadian dollars and he's certainly generated a lot of revenue from stud duty, too.
It's not unusual for coldbloods to race for many years. That's why they are so popular among racing fans in the Nordic nations of Sweden, Norway, and Finland. People get to know these horses and can follow their favorites year after year.
No, the coldbloods don't trot as fast as the Standardbreds do, but their longevity and crowd-pleasing appeal make them an important part of any Nordic racing program. Coldblood racing is actually a bigger part of racing in Norway and Finland than it is in Sweden, so you can imagine how special it is for the Swedes to have a better coldblood than their neighbors could produce.
It's also not unusual for coldbloods (and many European Standardbreds) to burn the candle at both ends by doing stud service while training and racing. The first foals of Jarvsofaks arrived in 2000 when he was a six-year-old and he has a total of 473 registered foals in Sweden.
His son Jarvsoviking just turned five and he's raced 23 times with 16 wins and never been worse than third. He's earned right at C$392,000 and he should still have lots of racing ahead of him.
My only chance to see Jarvsofaks win was on Elitlopp Day at Solvalla in 2004 when I was one of more than 33,000 people who jammed the track in Stockholm. Jarvsofaks won that day, as he always does, and a jubilant post-race parade up the homestretch ensued.
I don't know if my Norwegian or Finnish friends want to hear this, but Jarvsofaks is truly the greatest.
Dean Hoffman, one of North America's most prolific harness racing journalists and member of the U.S. Harness Racing Hall of Fame, offers SC website readers his weekly look at international standardbred racing through his eyes.
There's an idea;combining
There's an idea;combining racing and breeding. Why not have Somebeachsomewhere race and breed and thus make everybody happy in 2009.