Thanks to a man for all seasons named Dave Magee, Chicago is going to boast a national champion this year.
With five days left in his 12-month 1994 season, the 41-year-old northern Wisconsin native, who has been the dominant harness driver on the Chicago circuit for the last decade, is certain to wind up winning more races than any driver in North America.
Winter, spring, summer and fall. The mile track at Hawthorne Race Course, the 7/8-mile track at Sportsman’s Park and the half-mile track at Maywood Park. Side trips to Balmoral Park. Summer double-headers that entailed matinees at the Springfield and DuQuoin state fairs and Sportsman’s nightcaps.
Neither the season nor the track circumference seems consequential. The constant is Magee in the winner’s circle.
Magee began the week with 624 winners. His closest competitor was Dave Palone, a driver from the Meadows in Pennsylvania with 567 triumphs.
Magee will be the first driver on the Chicago circuit to win the national championship since Daryl Busse in 1975. His best previous finishes were thirds in 1982 and last year.
When Magee went over 600 winners for 1994 earlier this month at Maywood, he became the first driver in the 48-year history of Chicago harness racing to reach that plateau. Then, in mid-December, he became the fifth driver in North America to win more than 6,500 races in his career, joining Herve Filion, Carmine Abbatiello, Michel Lachance and John Campbell.
“I feel this year I’ve reached the pinnacle,” Magee said. “It’s something I never felt capable of achieving and it would be very difficult to repeat.
“I made a lot of sacrifices in my family life and I don’t want to do that again. Because of the dates situation there will be more racing at Balmoral and considerably less at Sportsman’s. I live an hour from Sportsman’s and an hour and a half from Balmoral. A round trip to Balmoral entails spending one more hour in the car and I don’t plan to do that very often.”
Magee’s lifestyle is a study in discipline and dedication.
He avoids red meat and makes vegetables the staple in his diet. He doesn’t smoke and he quit drinking “two or three years ago.”
“I never was a heavy drinker but I came to realize that alcohol is something that isn’t good for you,” he explained. “I have three little kids-Ross is 5 years old, Jess is 3 and Emily is 8 months. You have to practice what you’re going to preach.”
Instead of having an 86-proof potion for the road, Magee picks up the proofs of the program past performances for the next night and skims through them before heading home to Big Rock, Ill., near Aurora. The following day he will study them to determine which horse he will drive in races in which he has two or more to choose from, and he will try to handicap all the races.
“Some you can figure out beforehand; some you can’t,” he said. “I like to be in control of a race, but basically you have to fit into your driving what the horse can do in the given race.
“I can’t tell you who I won with last night. But I can tell you what I wish I had done a little differently on the ones I didn’t win with.”
Fellow driver Homer Hochstetler thinks patience and prudence are the secrets of Magee’s success in the sulky. “He can get a lot out of a horse just sitting there like he’s doing nothing,” Hochstetler said. “If you can make him go to the whip, you usually can beat him, but he very seldom goes to the whip.”
Magee believes he became a better driver after he stopped being a trainer about six years ago. “I don’t think I’d be as good mentally or physically if I was still doing that,” he said.
However, Magee misses training. “There’s a special feeling of accomplishment when a horse you trained does well,” he said. “My biggest highs in the business were because of the achievements of the horses I trained.”
Leave it to Magee to put the horse before the cart. He has driven more than 6,500 winners and is about to win a national championship, but he has yet to go on an ego trip.
