Rick Magee, a stalwart of Midwest racing, has moved his tack to The Meadows now that Hawthorne and Running Aces have completed their meetings and expects to stay here at least through year’s end.
Magee, who usually takes winters off, indicated he decided to keep his seven head going this year because he thinks they’ll fit well at The Meadows.
“One of the things I really like about this track is their classifications for trotters,” he says. “They write a lot of trots, and they split up the girls and the boys. In Minnesota, they don’t have a big enough batch of trotters to do that.”
Magee, nephew of prominent drivers Dave Magee (a Hall of Famer) and Dean Magee, is one of the sport’s dwindling breed of trainer/drivers who’s not particularly interested in specializing in one discipline or the other. For his career, he’s collected 1,045 driving wins, another 422 as a trainer.
“I catch drive a lot in Minnesota, but they race only three days a week,” he says. “There’s not enough income sometimes and a lot of time to fill. At other tracks, I’ve never really stayed long enough to get catch drives, though I’d get some after a while.”
