Trainer Andy Rickert notched career win No. 1,000 Tuesday (Jan. 26) at MGM Northfield Park when Keystone Chester scored in the sixth race with Ryan Stahl aboard.

Rickert, whose first training win came in the year 2000, grew up in a harness racing family. Younger brother Kris is a trainer, as is their father, Hoye, who, along with his wife, Pauline, has owned scores of Standardbreds over the years. The family farm in Fredonia, Pa., boasts a beautiful half-mile track where the younger Rickerts cut their teeth.

Andy Rickert’s horses have won nearly $8 million in purses. Still, it wasn’t a slam dunk that he would choose harness racing as a career. He earned a biology degree at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and toyed with the idea of becoming a veterinarian.

“I thought I would take a year off from school, but I never went back,” he says. “Harness racing is in my blood. Sometimes when I race and don’t get a cheque, when I’m driving home, I think some other career might have been easier. For the most part, I don’t regret it. I grew up with horses.”

Rickert races his stable of about 20 horses at both The Meadows and Northfield — each, he has measured, 91 miles from Fredonia. He figures to keep splitting time between the tracks.

“If I were closer to one track or the other, I probably wouldn’t be averse to growing the stable,” he says. “Right now, we can go both directions and do it comfortably.

“Sometimes I think it would be better to race at one track and not split the wins between two tracks. If I hit the trainer standings at one track, I might get more exposure.”

(Meadows Standardbred Owners Association)