Legendary harness racing driver John Campbell retiring at Meadowlands after 39 years

John Campbell, the winningest harness racing driver in the sport's history, will compete for the final time at the Meadowlands Racetrack on Friday.

Campbell, 62, whose career purse winnings will fall just a fraction shy of $300 million, has ranked first or second in purse earnings every year from 1979 through 2002, with just one exception. 

After 40 years in racing and having won more than 10,000 races, the River Vale resident said he is at peace about retiring from the sport. But he isn't leaving the track too far behind. Next week, he starts his job as president of the Hambletonian Society - the 93-year-old nonprofit group that runs the sport's richest events, including  The Hambletonian, the Hambletonian Oaks and the Breeders Crown.

Campbell grew up in western Ontario in the 1960s and early 1970s with a father and a grandfather who passed down their love for horses. He made it to the Meadowlands 40 years ago thanks some Canadian connections.

"Yonkers [Raceway] and Roosevelt Raceway were the mecca of harness racing back then," Campbell said. "Then the Meadowlands opened in 1976."

As fate would have it, Joe DeFrank, the racing secretary at Windsor Racecourse in Canada, wound up being hired that year at the Meadowlands. DeFrank suggested that two leading stable operators in Ontario ship their best horses down to East Rutherford. The one-mile track, also known as the Big M, would attract the best racers in the industry.

A year later, DeFrank invited Campbell -- who was early in his racing career -- to the Meadowlands. Campbell made his debut in January 1978.

"I didn't really establish myself that year; I just kind of hung on," Campbell said of his rookie season.

But he was able to upgrade the quality of horses in his stable and catch some extra rides on the horses of Lew Williams, who Campbell said had "the best stable on the grounds at that time."

It all clicked for Campbell in his second season, and he wound up as the track's leading driver in 1979 - an achievement he would repeat 15 more times.

Campbell’s pre-race routine at the track last week was remarkably laid back: He spent 20 minutes in the driver’s room casually reading the race program and occasionally looking out the window - or checking his phone - to figure out whether a looming storm would drench the track.

One driver walked past Campbell and noted that his beloved New York Rangers had made a major trade that day. Campbell calmly nodded.

But beneath the placid exterior, Campbell revealed that being at or near the top of the earnings standings for so many years never gave him too much comfort entering the racing season.

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“I don’t think you ever get used to that,” said Campbell. “It’s the nature of competition. You always have that fear or apprehension that things will not go well, because as easy as it is to snowball and win a lot of races, if you start losing races, that can snowball the other way.”

His new role at the Hambletonian Society will give him an opportunity to address some long-held concerns. In a 1990 interview with The Record, Campbell said that his sport was on a "downward swing" and that "harness racing needs a lot of new ideas."

Asked about those comments last week, Campbell said, "I stand by that. We haven't changed our thinking about our product as quickly as we should have, and that needs to change. We didn't do enough to evolve to people's changing tastes."

Campbell was routinely racing before 20,000 fans when he started at the Meadowlands almost 40 years ago. Now, attendance might be one-tenth of that even on a Saturday night as interest in horse racing - both thoroughbred racing at Monmouth Park and standardbred, or harness, racing at the Meadowlands and Freehold Raceway - has declined.

Campbell is preaching collaboration.

"There are three entities in the sport that control it the most - racetracks, racing commissions, and the horsemen," said Campbell, who will race on Sunday at Historic Track in Goshen, New York and for one night in his native Ontario later this month before calling it quits. "We at the Hambletonian Society have to convince those groups to make decisions for the overall good. Sometimes that has happened and sometimes it hasn't, but we'll have to work together if we are going to make any progress."

Asked if the sport could be said to be "in crisis," Campbell replied, "We should have that attitude, for sure, because slot machine programs in every state are always in jeopardy because politicians can always take the money back."

Campbell was referring to the "racinos" - combined racetrack and slot machine facilities where the states offer a sliver of the annual slots revenues to subsidize horse racing purses. But New Jersey does not permit slot machines outside of Atlantic City.

As a result, the quality of racing at the Meadowlands has suffered as owners, trainers, and drivers chase larger purses at racinos in New York, Pennsylvania and other states.

Linda Toscano, the first female trainer to win the Hambletonian with the horse Market Share in 2012, said she worked for Campbell in the 1980s and has enjoyed their friendship ever since.

"What makes him so good?" Toscano asked before answering, "It's very rare to find a driver that can drive a trotter, a pacer, a mare, a stud, a lazy horse,or a fractious horse. John can do all that, and that makes him special."

Campbell was sidetracked with a fractured elbow in 2003 and a broken leg in 2006. "I had gotten banged up a little before that - I tore a knee up and had a couple of broken bones, but nothing major," Campbell said.

Even worse was the damage from another spill in 2011, where Campbell suffered cracked ribs, a broken shoulder, a broken collarbone, and a knee injury. That finally led Campbell to cut back his schedule, but he still had the racing bug.

Then The Hambletonian Society came calling last year as they sought a new president to replace Tom Charters, and Campbell - a husband of 40 years, a father of three adult daughters and a grandfather five times over - was intrigued.

"I thought about it as an opportunity coming at the right time," said Campbell. "I still enjoy driving, so maybe this accelerated [his retirement] a little bit. But like people say, I'd rather go out a year too early than a year too late."

On the web

Watch a video of John Campbell talking about his harness racing experiences at the Meadowlands Racetrack. Visit njersy.co/campbellretires