When presiding judge Charles Malia first started racing horses there were 17 racetracks in New England.
“I got my start with the Thoroughbreds as a hot walker, then a groom and exercise rider,” said the retired school teacher. “In those days there was a lot of opportunity for young people to get into the sport.”
When Scarborough closed for the runners around 1969 he raced for another decade at Suffolk and Rockingham.
Malia said, “I took on project horses. When others were having difficulty getting one to run, I would buy them and get them turned around.”
By the mid-1980s, much of the flat tracks had evaporated so he made the jump into harness.
“I started as a fan at Scarborough and then bought my first harness horse pretty cheap. Her name was Race Me Victoria, a Maine-bred mare who turned into an open pacer. We had a lot of fun. She won 12 races the year we bought her,” Malia recalled.
Following his retirement from scholastics in 1998, Malia started hanging around the race office at Scarborough when Paul Verrette was a patrol judge. From there he worked his way up the officiating ladder and was the Presiding Judge when Scarborough closed in 2020.
Excited about the new era, Malia said, “Maine racing has had a definite feel of insecurity for a period of time. If things grow with the passion shown by First Tracks Cumberland, Maine horseman will have some security going forward that has been absent for a decade or more.”
Associate Judge Christine Miller echoed those sentiments. “I am looking forward to serving with First Tracks and this new venture, which will hopefully resurrect Maine harness racing,” she said.
Miller worked at Plainridge for six years as the Testing Barn Supervisor for the state of Massachusetts. No stranger to the inner workings of the harness game, Miller jumped at the opportunity to attend the USTA’s Racing Officials Accreditation Program.
“It was an immersive and comprehensive seven day course that was held at the Meadows in Pennsylvania in 2017. Chip Hastings and T.C. Lane were excellent instructors and I left there with the confidence and the knowledge to pursue a second career as a racing official.”
Not one to let her engines idle, Miller also works for a Thoroughbred owner providing marketing services and customer relations. In addition, Miller and her husband (a third generation horse trainer) operate an Equestrian facility specializing in Hunter/Jumpers where they teach kids how to ride and train show horses.
It was at Plainridge where Christine Miller met a gregarious fellow named Frank DuBreuil.
Originally from Pawtucket, R.I., Frank DuBreuil knows just about everyone around New England and has ‘been around forever.’ Truth be told, Frank has been around harness racing for half a century. He has been an owner, a trainer, a driver and a racing official.
He rubbed his first horse at Foxboro in in the mid-70s, then bought one and shipped to Maine to race. After several decades of racing horses he landed the position of paddock judge at Plainridge when they reopened in 1999, and held that job through 2015.
A familiar face around New England, Frank works many of the fairs around the state of Maine as an associate judge, presiding judge and sometimes as the assistant racing secretary.
Currently, DuBreuil works the back security gate at Plainridge on Monday, Thursday and Fridays, checking horses in on race days. Soon, he will trek up I-95 to be the paddock judge at Cumberland on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
DuBreuil knows that it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to put on a race card, but it also takes good people. Just ask Mike Timmons, the former chairman of the Maine Harness Racing Commission.
“Aside from the Trainers, Drivers and Caretakers, twenty different people are responsible for facilitating and executing all the necessary steps in getting a horse race to the gate when the starter says ;'Go!'”
Having spent decades as the Director of Harness Racing at the Cumberland Fair, he has been instrumental in ensuring that the ‘show goes on.’ Currently, he is the vice president of the Maine Agricultural Association of Fairs, which oversees 26 fairs throughout the state. He served as president of the Cumberland Fair for 16 years.
When the first horses go behind the gate at First Tracks Cumberland, Timmons will start his new role at his old stomping grounds, that of a USTA accredited Associate Judge.
Once voted the Maine High School Principal of the Year, after retiring from 47 years in education, Timmons moved to a place he first visited in 1953…The Cumberland Fairgrounds, where he now calls home.
“I will have the shortest commute out of any of my colleagues, because I live right on the fairgrounds!”
(First Tracks Cumberland)