It was the long and the short of it for 6’5” western Pennsylvanian horseman Ron Burke in recent year-end honours balloting by the U.S. Harness Writers Association

. Burke easily won the Glen Garnsey Trainer of the Year Award, with the largest surplus in all of this year’s contests, but his ownership entity (Burke Racing LLC) and its combination with his good friends and main owning partners Mark Weaver and Mike Bruscemi (Weaver Bruscemi LLC) lost in the Norman Woolworth Owner of the Year competition to prominent Ontario horseman John Fielding by one vote.

Fielding is certainly deserving of his honour, having campaigned 16 horses that made $100,000 or more during the 2011 campaign. The most famous of them was the comet-blur three-year-old pacing filly See You At Peelers, who will be regarded as one of her division’s most talented horses ever, but the Fielding barn also sent out Breeders Crown champions Cedar Dove (3TF) and Uncle Peter (2TC), thus now putting him in second place in wins and money in Breeders Crown history.

Fielding was also involved in a philanthropic effort in 2011, as he and his co-owners of the fast sophomore trotter Pastor Stephen donated 5 per cent of his earnings to 'Pastor Stephen Racing for Africa,' a charity established by the hometown minister of trainer Jimmy Takter to battle the desperate economic conditions of the subequatorial continent, especially in Malawi.

Burke, long a master of the far-flung and successful raceway stable, had 790 winners at press time (more than head-bobbing drivers Dan Noble and George Brennan), but this year marked a watershed for Burke after making his stable a major factor in many stakes races (his 2011 stable earnings are over $18 million, more than two and a half times his nearest foe), in most divisions, and at seemingly every track.

The star of stars for Burke was the freshman pacing colt Sweet Lou (which he co-owns with Weaver Bruscemi, Lawrence Karr, and Phil Collura), whose 1:49 victory in his Breeders Crown final on a cool autumn night at Woodbine Racetrack was merely the fastest mile in harness history by a two-year-old. Another Burke contender for seasonal honours (which will be announced next Tuesday) is the iron-sided free-for-all pacer Foiled Again, who bankrolled $1.4 million of his career $3.4 million cashflow this past campaign – and lowered his mark to 1:48 at age seven.

Burke and Fielding will receive their individual awards (and maybe some more for their champion equines) at the Dan Patch Awards Dinner, honouring Stan Bergstein, to be held Sunday, February 12, 2012, at the DoubleTree Hilton at Orlando (FL) SeaWorld.

(USHWA)