Longtime Saratoga driver Dan Cappello Jr. did something on Saturday night (August 4) that no other driver before him has done in the previous 70 years of racing at Saratoga Casino and Raceway.
The 53-year-old reinsman won for the 5,000th time in his illustrious career on Saturday, piloting Cheyenne Cam to victory in wire-to-wire fashion.
Cappello became the first driver to celebrate win number 5,000 at the Spa.
One other current local driver has reached that plateau and that is Wally Hennessey. A national Hall of Famer, Hennessey has well over 8,000 career victories, but he did not secure the bulk of his wins, nor achieve the milestone 5,000th victory while competing locally.
On Saturday night, with a packed house at the raceway, Cappello entered uncharted waters.
After learning the sport of harness racing as a youth from his father, Cappello began driving in the late 1970s at Monticello Raceway. Following about a five year stint there, Cappello came to Saratoga and became the Johnny Page Award winner back in 1983, an award that recognizes the track’s top up-and-coming driver, following a season in which the young reinsman finished sixth in the driver standings.
Cappello became a Spa regular at that point and has finished among the top drivers every year since. That’s a strong 30 years of success in the sulky. While he did compile some wins while wintering at Pompano Park in Florida for several years, Saratoga has been Danny’s home track and it was there where he reached his most recent and ultra-impressive milestone.
In 1993, Cappello registered his 1,000th win with a horse named BJs Power and soon after, his career just took off. In 1995, Danny won his first driving title and subsequently was named Horseman of the Year at Saratoga, an award he would go on to win the following two year as well.
Ever since the mid 1990s, Dan Cappello Jr.’s name has been near the top of the driver standings each and every year and the Ballston Spa resident and avid golf enthusiast has won the driving title eight times. Though Billy Dobson, who is in line to win his third consecutive driving championship this season has been a dominant force in the sulky of late, Cappello has stuck right with the youngster in the standings and currently sits in second once again.
Cappello has recorded all of his milestone wins at Saratoga Casino and Raceway, scoring victory number 3,000 with young trotter Little Haus in September of 2004 and number 4,000 with pacer New Release who went wire-to-wire, a method Cappello has perfected throughout his career.
Danny has been named Horseman of the Year at the track four times, most recently in 2007.
Danny has exhibited incredible durability and consistency and combined those characteristics with his natural talent en route to reaching the 5,000 win plateau. On Saturday night, needing just one win, Cappello got it out of the way fairly early on in the evening, even before the Joe Gerrity Jr. Memorial Pacing Series got underway. It was there that Cappello won for the 5,001st time and nearly set a track record in the process.
Dancin Yankee drew the rail for his local debut and he and Cappello sat the pocket in their $25,000 division of the series for Open pacers. The Josh Green trainee sat patiently behind the leader who set blistering fractions throughout the mile before getting up to win in 1:51.1, just a fifth of a second off the all-time track record.
The first leg of the series other winners were BJs Bequia (Billy Dobson) and Rock To Glory (Greg Merton).
The $130,000 final of the Gerrity series is set to take place on Saturday (August 18).
(Saratoga Raceway)