Word: filion
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...more or less typical working day this summer, Harness-Racing Driver Hervé Filion finished five races at New Jersey's Freehold Raceway and flew by chartered plane to New York's Yonkers Raceway for four more starts. Then, still wearing his red, white and blue silks, he boarded a helicopter waiting on the track's infield, shuttled to the Teterboro, N.J., airport, transferred to a chartered jet, flew to the Toronto Island Airport, took a speedboat to the mainland, jumped into a police car and arrived at Greenwood Raceway just in time to take another turn...
...late December all that hustle had brought Filion close to his avowed goal of 600 victories for 1972. It had also ensured that his winnings for the year would top $800,000, dwarfing the income of most of the world's top professional sportsmen. Eight hundred thousand dollars for a harness-racing driver? Hervé has an explanation: "A man who drives another's horse gets 5% of the horses winnings. A man who drives and trains another's horse gets 10% The man who drives, trains and owns a horse gets 100%." Conclusion...
...payoff, Filion's operation is relatively small-time. The vast majority of the 125 standardbreds he partially or wholly owns are inexpensive horses that he has picked up in claiming races.* In fact, Filion's admirers say, the "Little Iron Man"-as the cocky, compact (5 ft. 6 in., 150 lbs.) French Canadian is known-will race any combination of two wheels and four legs. One of Filion's alltime favorites was a horse called Rabbit, an equine outpatient that, as one railbird recalls, had "four lame legs and so many bone chips he sounded like...
...large part of Filion's success can be attributed to his encyclopedic knowledge of almost every standardbred he faces and his knack for recognizing and exploiting the strengths of the most unlikely looking horse. "He has the eyes of a hawk," says Owner Benjamin Schaffer, "and he never forgets anything about one of his or someone else's horse." Beyond that, Filion is a crafty reinsman who among other things, excels at a tactic that might be called the Hervé Hop. Rather than throw his horse off balance by using the reins to turn his head, Filion...
Despite his hard-earned riches. Filion's only outward signs of wealth are his Capital Hill Farms in Lachute, Quebec, a blue and white Fleetwood Eldorado, a flashy mod wardrobe and a $400 toupee that he wore when Canadian Governor General Roland Michener presented him with the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Service Award...