W_Z wrote:
cool. i had a feeling you'd answer it that way. when i was looking up the difference it seemed like trotters are the fine wine, and pacers are cheap beer or a shot of jager.
I'd say that's a good analogy. Back in the 1800s when all the rich swells in New York were competing to buy the best trotters, hillbillies in Tennessee and Indiana drover pacers. A nickname for hopples is "Indiana pants". If you had a trotter you couldn't get trotting an old time horseman might say, "Well, you can always put the pants on him."
One easy way to tell the difference between a pacer and a trotter is that trotters usually don't wear any straps (hopples) around their legs. But in the 70s or 80s an Australian guy named Ken Shand invented a trotting hopple that has become popular. The first horse of any account that I can remember wearing them was a freakishly fast filly named CR Kay Suzie. It was very controversial at the time. The purists were appalled by hopples on a trotter. That is, until they had an expensive horse of their own that they couldn't get to stay trotting any other way. Now you see them all the time. The Europeans still disdain them and I'm pretty sure they are banned over there. The rules regarding equipment and medication are much more stringent in Europe. In fact, geldings aren't even allowed in some classic races over there.
Europeans take their trotting very seriously. I was out at the Meadowlands racing a couple of my good horses in some big races back in 2001. There was a Breeder's Crown race for older trotters on the card and a horse that many consider the greatest trotter ever, Varenne, had shipped in from Italy. He absolutely crushed the best horses in America. After the race all these Guidos in $3000 Italian suits began running around the track apron waving Italian flags. My partners and I were cracking up. Then they began playing this song in French over the PA. The horse had his own fucking theme song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWmTphbRtjM