The 38th edition of the prestigious Breeders Crown is coming back to Indiana this fall. It takes a village to plan, prep and present an event of this magnitude and those involved are already working toward the two-day series set for Friday, Oct. 27 and Saturday, Oct. 28. The Breeders Crown will include four two-year-old events on Friday with eight races pegged for three-year-olds and up on the Saturday evening card.
The kickoff meeting for Breeders Crown was held Friday, March 31 in the Top of the Park room at Harrah’s Hoosier Park. Photo by Tony Renz
Close to 40 people attended the kickoff meeting Friday, March 31. Plans began for this year’s Breeders Crown event. Representatives of the Indiana Horse Racing Commission, the Indiana Standardbred Association, Harrah’s Hoosier Park, and the Hambletonian Society were in attendance to discuss the next steps and establish committees.
Numerous committees are formed to handle intricate details for seating, food and beverage, television production, horsemen accommodations, charity challenge, and more, just to name a few. Once the kickoff was held, then the committees will meet on their own to start implementing work on the event and report back to the overall group with general meetings throughout the summer.
Both John Campbell and Moira Fanning flew in from New Jersey to attend the kick-off meeting. The first Breeders Crown was Campbell’s first one as the president and CEO of the Hambletonian Society after he retired from a brilliant driving career. The Hall of Famer will most definitely go down in history as one of the greatest drivers to ever sit in a race bike. Fanning, who now serves as the COO of the organization, has been with the Hambletonian Society since 1988, three years after the Breeders Crown began. She is, and has always been, one of the top publicists in the sport of harness racing.
This is the third time the Breeders Crown has been held in Indiana. The track hosted the event in 2017 and again in 2020, with limited planning and execution due to Covid-19. Indiana is ready to be back in full force for the third time around of Standardbred racing’s biggest event of the year.