ON THE Wrong Track : Whether It Is the Result of Bad Luck--or Simply Bad Racing--Pacer Treboh Joe Might Tie the Harness Racing Record for Futility

At Pocono Downs, a small harness track in northeastern Pennsylvania where the average crowd is fewer than 2,000, fans have been futilely exhorting a small gelding pacer and his owner-driver-trainer for the last three years.

“Come on, Skip,” they will yell when Treboh Joe comes on the track with Willie (Skip) Mitchell Jr. in the sulky.

“There’s never any boos,” Mitchell said. “Because they know me and this horse are always trying.”

Try as they do, Treboh Joe never wins. Since 1990, he has raced at Pocono 63 times--mostly for purses that range between $1,500 and $1,320--and the best he has done is four second-place finishes.

But Treboh Joe’s 63-race losing streak at Pocono is only peanuts. The 9-year-old bay’s overall losing streak, dating to 1986, is 165 races, and that puts him one away from tying the harness record, which was set by New Express from 1977 through 1984.

Probably the most ignominious racing record is held by Shiaway Moses, a standardbred who never won a race, losing all 161 of his starts in a career that ended in 1989. On June 4, 1986, Treboh Joe lost all chance of breaking Shiaway Moses’ record when he won a $1,400 race at Saratoga Raceway in upstate New York. Treboh Joe must have looked like a good thing--he had been second, beaten by a nose, over the same track the month before--and he paid $3.80 to win for his wire-to-wire victory.

A week later, Treboh Joe finished fifth at Saratoga, the start of his 165-race losing streak.

“Maybe the cameras spooked him in the winner’s circle and he didn’t want to go back,” joked Williams, a 43-year-old native of Savannah, Ga., who grew up near Harrington Raceway in Delaware. Williams got his start in racing by working as a groom at the Harrington track, and a few years later he worked for Bill Haughton, the late Hall of Fame driver-trainer.

In 1989, Williams began working for Walter Cohen, a Staten Island, N.Y., owner who raced horses at Pocono. The previous June, Cohen became Treboh Joe’s fifth owner, buying a horse with a 40-race losing streak. Williams said that he heard the price was $7,500. At the time, Treboh Joe was at the competitive zenith of his career, losing by small margins, and a month before Cohen bought him, he was first in a qualifying race--one that doesn’t count on a horse’s record--at Brandywine Raceway in Delaware.

In 1989, Treboh Joe raced 22 times in New York, at Yonkers and Monticello Raceways. The streak grew to 79, with his only in-the-money finish a second at Yonkers in May. Beaten by two lengths, he earned $1,125, the biggest payday he has ever had.

In the early part of 1990, on the same circuit, the losses piled up for Treboh Joe. In late March, Cohen sent him to Pocono. Mitchell drove him for the first time on March 31, and they finished seventh in an eight-horse field. But for one start, Mitchell has been Treboh Joe’s only driver since.

By the end of 1990, Treboh Joe’s streak had reached 119 races. He finished second three times and was third four times, earning $3,157, but Cohen was no longer enjoying his reputation as the owner of a horse who never won. For Christmas in 1990, he gave Treboh Joe to Willie Mitchell.

Then and now, Treboh Joe is Mitchell’s only horse. “When I got him, he wasn’t too well,” Mitchell said recently. “But he’s never been lame since I’ve had him. He’s always been racehorse sound. I’ve never given him Bute (an analgesic for sore horses). I give him vitamins and Lasix (an anti-bleeding medication), but that’s all.”

Even though the price was right, Treboh Joe couldn’t have looked like much of a bargain for a horseman who didn’t own a car, couldn’t afford a telephone and hitched rides or rode the bus for the three-mile trip to Pocono Downs. In racing, though, you never know. Several years before, Mitchell had given up on a horse who later panned out, and he wasn’t going to reject Treboh Joe.

The mention of Speedy Wings, that horse that got away, rankles Mitchell. “That horse was my downfall,” he said. “He was a 3-year-old trotter, and I owned part of him. My partner was not happy with the way I was driving him, so I sold my share, and he went on to win $160,000. It just shows that if you have something somebody wants, they’ll figure out a way to get it from you.”

Bitter about Speedy Wings, Mitchell is defensive about Treboh Joe.

“He’s got ability. It’s just that he’s always running into better horses,” Mitchell said.

Sometimes, racing luck has prevented Treboh Joe from ending the streak. Mitchell recalled a race this season at Pocono: “We moved from seventh to third place. But then the two favorites were just sitting there, right in front of us, and I couldn’t get around. We wound up fifth.”

The best race that Treboh Joe had all last year came in his 25th and final start. At 118-1 odds, he finished second at The Meadows, near Pittsburgh, losing by one length on a sloppy track.

“I lost my whip in the stretch that night,” Mitchell said. “He gave me all he had. I don’t think it would have made any difference if I had kept the whip.”

Treboh Joe paid $87 to place. “I didn’t have a ticket,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know how to bet this horse except to win.”

Treboh Joe is a Michigan-bred whose sire, Sonsam, earned $820,104. Sonsam’s offspring have won more than 450 races and produced about 275 sub-two-minute miles. Treboh Joe’s breeder, Hobert Maynard, names his horses by reversing the spelling of his first name.

As a 2-year-old, in 1985, Treboh Joe was driven by Joe Marsh Jr. and Michel Lachance, two of the leaders at Yonkers Raceway. “I heard that they were too aggressive with him,” Mitchell said. “As a young horse, he was not ready for that. As a 3-year-old, he got pretty sick. He ate some bad hay at Monticello.”

Treboh Joe’s 165 in a row have been spread over 11 Eastern tracks--Saratoga, Rosecroft, Dover Downs, Brandywine, Delmarva, Harrington, Roosevelt, Yonkers, Monticello, The Meadows and Pocono.

The last time Treboh Joe raced--loss No. 165 on July 31--he finished seventh. “A dismal performance,” said John Zimich, a track spokesman. “One of his worst.”

A few days later, the Pocono stewards asked that Treboh Joe return to a qualifying race. Treboh Joe couldn’t race any faster than 2:05, the minimum qualifying time.

“He was sick,” Willie Mitchell said. “He had a fever.”

On Wednesday, Treboh Joe raced in another qualifier and this time his time was 2:02. He is expected to be entered in a race at Pocono soon.

In 21 starts this year, Treboh Joe has earned $1,130. To make ends meet, Mitchell helps out at Pocono, in the barn area in the mornings and in the paddock during the racing programs at night. He is a blacksmith who does all the shoeing for Treboh Joe.

Treboh Joe has been racing for a $2,500 claiming price in recent starts, and Mitchell bristles at the thought that someone might buy him. “If they claimed him, it would be more like a joke,” Mitchell said. “It would be somebody who just wants to be the owner when he sets the world record.”

Asked what he would do if Treboh Joe were claimed, he said: “This horse has always been safe to ride, and he’s like my pet. I guess I’d go on vacation if I lost him.”

Treboh Joe’s Career Record

Year Starts 1 2 3 Money 1985 4 0 0 1 $ 375 1986 16 1 1 4 2,562 1987 17 0 0 1 758 1988 31 0 4 2 3,272 1989 22 0 1 0 1,980 1990 40 0 3 4 3,157 1991 25 0 1 2 893 1992 21 0 0 2 1,130 Totals 176 1 10 16 14,127