The Meadows Racetrack & Casino and the Meadows Standardbred Owners Association on Tuesday honoured Ray Paver for the 4,000th winning drive of his career. Paver, who years ago left a job dealing blackjack to mess around with harness racing, dealt himself winning hand 4,000 on Aug. 23 at the Monroe County Fair in Woodsfield, Ohio.
Paver responded in kind by winning Tuesday’s feature with Shesasmokinlady, a mare he also trains.
An Ohio native, Paver helped his dad, the late horseman Ray Paver, Sr., while attending Marysville High School but didn’t envision harness racing in his future. He struck out on an itinerant path, serving a stint as a tugboat painter in Florida before landing in Las Vegas. There, he secured a job dealing blackjack at the Flamingo. One of the important lessons he learned was that his compensation might be enhanced by women of a certain age.
“All you had to do was be sweet to them,” he recalls, “and they’d just keep tipping you. I always hoped they won. The more they won, the more they tipped.”
After three years of dealing on the graveyard shift burned him out, he returned to Ohio, primarily to help his father, but his own career as a trainer/driver took off. In fact, United States Trotting Association records show Paver, 61, with 793 career training wins; that figure is almost certainly substantially below his actual total, as USTA didn’t begin documenting trainer statistics until 1991.
Today, Paver and his wife, Kelly, jointly operate a stable of about two dozen horses at The Meadows, though they also race in Ohio and, occasionally, in New York. Since Kelly also is a trainer, they’ve developed a system that determines which of them should be listed as conditioner for a given horse.
“They’re pets to her more than racehorses,” he said, “so if she wants to keep one, she’s his trainer. For the others, I’m the trainer.”
Paver is talking retirement, but nobody is taking him seriously — yet.
“I would have to do something; I just don’t know what it would be,” he said. “Kelly doesn’t want to quit, so she could operate the stable. It would give her something to do while I’m laying on the beach.”
(The Meadows)