Harness Racing Safety Again Under Scrutiny : Five Deaths Since 1979 Raise Questions About Helmet Safety, Driver Licensing

Every sport demands a legend; harness racing had Bill Haughton.

In 35 years as a driver, he won more than $40 million in purses, nearly 5,000 races and led the nation in victories 12 times. His reputation grew until, like all legends, he became part fact, part fiction. Babe Ruth, Red Grange and Jack Armstrong rolled into one bespectacled package sitting pretty behind a trotter, holding the reins ever so sweetly.

So when Bill Haughton died--thrown from his sulky on July 5, landing on the back of his head at Yonkers Raceway--so did a little bit of harness racing.

“We are told that there is no such thing as an indispensable man,” eulogized Stan Bergstein, executive vice president of Harness Tracks of America, Inc., “but no harness horseman of the last half century and none in sight on the horizon, can fill the void left by Bill Haughton’s passing.”

Haughton became the fifth driver since 1979 to die in a harness race. Those five deaths--all caused by head injuries--outnumber all fatal accidents recorded from 1932 to 1978 by the U.S. Trotting Assn. Haughton’s death has elicited a renewed call for stronger safety regulations in the sport.

It has brought attention to the need for helmet legislation, but helmets simply minimize the effects of accidents. An increasing number of drivers, trainers and officials are looking closer at their sport and at the causes of those accidents.

Questions have been raised about driver licensing and the current popularity of pacers--a type of harness horse that trots because of leather straps (hopples) tied to its legs. The straps make the horse less likely to break gait but more likely to fall after stumbling.

Haughton’s death occurred when his mount, a 2-year-old pacer named Sonny Key, fell over 2-year-old Crimson, who had tripped and fallen.

“Billy Haughton’s death accentuated the sport’s need to move and address safety problems more seriously,” said Ron Dancer, chairman of the safety commission for the USTA. “It’s quite an ignominious record. Besides the five deaths, three other drivers have been in life-threatening comas (each of the eight accidents occurred behind pacers). . . . It’s a shame death has to be the catalyst for change.”

Pacing’s popularity--Dancer estimates 90% of all harness races are run with pacers--is based in how easy pacers are to train and the fact that the public prefers betting on them compared to trotters. Hopples--derisively referred to as “training wheels” by some--reduce the amount of training necessary to teach a horse the gait.

“It takes a horseman to teach a trotter to trot,” Bergstein said. “An accountant can train a pacer. How much skill is there in tying a leather strap?”

If a pacer makes life easier for a trainer, it also does so for the betting public, which feels more comfortable placing money on a horse less likely to break his gait and therefore be disqualified. Racing secretaries across the nation, having recognized this tendency in bettors, have scheduled increasing numbers of pacer races.

“Their (pacers’) popularity is pretty well safe,” said Biff Lowry, resident manager at Los Alamitos Race Course. “I don’t think pacers will get any more popular, I think they have pretty well peaked, but I don’t see any shift in popularity in the future, either.”

But, unlike driver licensing and helmet regulation, there is no movement afoot to change the makeup of harness races.

“I know I feel a lot more confident behind a trotter,” said Rick Kuebler, a driver and former president of the California drivers’ guild. “But this is big business. If the public prefers pacers then that’s what the tracks are going to give them. And that’s what I’m going to drive.”

Kuebler, a veteran driver participating in the 45-day meet at Los Alamitos that opened Aug. 13, has been one of the premier drivers on the West Coast circuit for nearly a decade. He also has known the underside of the sport. It was Kuebler who won the race at Hollywood Park in 1982 that proved to be driver Shelly Goudreau’s last.

“I remember hearing him (Goudreau) yelling to the other drivers to stay away because his driving line had broke and he was out of control,” he said. “I heard yelling, more yelling, then nothing. It wasn’t until after the race that I found out he had been hurt.”

A week later, Goudreau was dead, the head injuries he suffered in the accident having proved fatal. Kuebler knows that falls come with the sport--he estimates he will take at least three “really good” spills each racing year. But he worries that the constant influx of inexperienced drivers is increasing the chance of serious injury.

“There are so few really professional drivers around here,” Kuebler said. “You look at a track like this (Los Alamitos’ half mile). The turns are real tight, when I see a couple of inexperienced faces in a tight pack on one of those turns I start to get a little worried. They’re the type to tense up, and when that happens so do accidents.”

Kuebler wants to see more stringent controls put on licensing of drivers. Currently, a person must take a written examination and present signed recommendations from six USTA members. However, as Dancer says, those USTA members do not have to be experienced trainers or drivers.

“The USTA has become a mail-order factory for licenses,” he said. “I’ve proposed that we demand only A-rated drivers (full-time professionals) be allowed to give recommendations. I’ve also proposed we require an on-hands driving test. Just the way that you’re tested for an automobile license.”

But no call for change has been as great as in helmet regulation. Haughton wore a Caliente helmet, which has been the the most popular harness helmet in use since 1960. It’s the same type of helmet that Goudreau wore and the same type Wayne Smullen wore when he died at Laurel Raceway in Maryland in 1983. It’s light and allows the driver easy peripheral vision.

However, the one thing it isn’t is safe. The Caliente was described in a study by the Snell Memorial Foundation, an independent tester, as having all the durability of a child’s bicycle helmet. Haughton, Goudreau and Smullen’s helmets each split when the back of their heads hit the ground.

In March 1984, the USTA commissioned the Snell Foundation to develop the first standard of safety for harness helmets. By May of that year, Snell had settled on a series of tests and a standard of durability.

In the wake of Haughton’s death, state racing commissions in Kentucky, New Jersey and New York have passed legislation requiring drivers to wear headgear that passes the test of Snell, the U.S Dept. of Transportation or the American Society of Testing Materials.

The California Horse Racing Board has yet to pass any such legislation, but secretary Len Foote said the text for such a requirement has been written. The problem is that of the three helmets receiving Snell test approvals--the American-made Bell, the Japanese-made Marushian and the Canadian-made Grattan--only Bell has submitted its certification to the board and only Bell is available throughout the state.

“We can’t mandate the use of a certain type helmet when there is only one manufacturer making that helmet available,” Foote said. “It would be like giving Bell a monopoly. We’re waiting for one more manufacturer to step forward so we can mandate the use of a safer helmet.”

It may sound odd that state boards would have to force drivers to wear safe helmets. But many drivers, a majority of them veterans, find the new helmets heavy and cumbersome. The Caliente is cut like a baseball cap, far away from the eyes and does not come as far down on the neck as the new helmets.

“I think it’s a lot more dangerous to wear a helmet that doesn’t allow you to see the danger around you,” said driver Gene Vallandingham, his hand atop a Caliente helmet with several swatches of paint missing because of accidents. “The new helmets are so heavy and so hard to handle on your head they make accidents more likely.”