Little Brown Jug Heat Format Discussed
Driver John Campbell Speaks In Open Public Forum
Sep 24, 2008 BarbaraAnne Helberg
Somebeachsomewhere didn't come to Delaware for the $551,000 Little Brown Jug September 14-18. Why did the North America Cup champion, just once-defeated (in the Meadowlands Pace) this season, skip the Jug format? In a public forum September 18, before the Jug eliminations began, all-time winningest driver John Campbell, who also serves on the Jug directors board, answered that question.
Inquiring Minds Want to Know About Jug Changes
The forum was informal and open to the visiting public, harness racing supporters and advocates who had come to watch pacing's best contestants duke it out in one day of heats. And there, supposedly, lay the problem.
Someone asked, in obvious context -- the glaring absence of champion pacer Somebeachsomewhere -- "What would the Jug have to do to get the best pacers to come aboard?"
Where In The World Is Somebeachsomewhere?
All ears leaned forward to hear the answer. All lips held silence, all eyes peered at the forum speaker, Campbell, who was available to interact with the public in the little green-gabled, walled gazebo-like Jugette enclosure that sits in the center of a similarly circular stable area of the Delaware County fairgrounds, where the Little Brown Jug has enjoyed a prestigious gathering of the season's top pacers since 1946 when Ensign Hanover won the first running.
Most of the best pacers were stabled, awaiting the day's Jug eliminations and final; Art Official, who had thrown off Somebeachsomewhere in the Meadowlands Pace by a neck, handing the Brent Mcgrath-owned and trained colt his first and only loss on the year; Badlands Nitro, the heir apparent, son of Badlands Hanover; up and comers Lonestar Legend, Mystery Chase, Santana Blue Chip, Atochia, Shadow Play, Moon Beam, Rudy Rednose, Upfront Hannahsboy, Dali -- but Somebeachsomewhere was conspicuous in his absence.
Change the Jug's One-Day Elimination Format?
What to do? Change the format? Change the Jug from a single day of championship elimination heats?
Not going to happen. Campbell had answered measuredly. If the connections of some pacers, like Somebeachsomewhere, preferred to run a week's format, in which one individual wasn't required to run more than one heat per day, that was their free choice.
Do Jug Purses Talk?
Then what? Ears and eyes refocused on the handsome, strikingly black-haired driver seated at the front of the room, behind a single, small microphone and below the rows of framed pictures of the Jug's and Jugette's outstanding drivers, and below the circular presentation of frames and glass protecting the thirty-some past Jugette winners closing in on the wire.
To get the best to the Jug, Campbell said, "We've got to raise the purses."
An Internet survey at Harness Racing's Daily News Source, September 18, 2008 showed a public vote of confidence, 64% (542 votes) to 30% (306 votes), in attendance for the Little Brown Jug. The majority said their interest in the Jug was not swayed by Somebeachsomewhere's absence.
Latest Articles