DAVID WILLMOT IS HTA MESSENGER AWARD WINNER

David S. Willmot, chairman and chief executive officer of Woodbine Entertainment Group and one of the true visionaries of North American horse racing, harness and thoroughbred, is the winner of Harness Tracks of America’s Messenger Award, the highest honor bestowed by the association of 41 U.S. and Canadian harness tracks.

A brilliantly articulate and far-seeing racing executive, Willmot has built Woodbine Entertainment into a world leader in racing and gaming, and he is expanding its horizons with a $310 million, 25-acre, multi-purpose complex on Woodbine’s spacious grounds that will be a state-of-the-art sports and entertainment center. The project, Woodbine Live!, is being built on the largest piece of undeveloped property in the city of Toronto, and Willmot says it will be "far more than a cinema dropped onto a parking lot. I would like to think of it as the new heartbeat of Toronto."

A highly successful owner in both harness racing and thoroughbred racing, Willmot and his late father, D. G. (Bud) Willmot, won the Queen’s Plate five times over a 30-year period. He urged his father to buy the thoroughbred filly Cool Mood, which won the Canadian Oaks and started a bloodline that produced such runners as Izvestia, With Approval and the Belmont Stakes winner Touch Gold. In five brief years of harness ownership with partner Bob Anderson, Willmot has had two divisional champions. One – the trotting filly Southwind Allaire – won the Hambletonian Oaks and $733,534 and the other, the pacing filly Cabrini Hanover, was named champion of her 2- and 3-year-old seasons by the racing secretaries of HTA’s tracks and has won $1,294,790.

As Messenger winner, Willmot will give a brief traditional "state of the sport" message at the Night of Stars celebration February 8, a highlight of the upcoming Racing Congress at Bellagio in LasVegas.

CAT MANZI HTA DRIVER OF YEAR

Catello (Cat) Manzi has added the most difficult of all harness racing awards to his honors, being named Harness Tracks of America’s Driver of the Year.

To win the award a driver must rank in the top 25 in North America in three categories: wins, money won and driving percentage. Only 3 drivers – Manzi, Dave Palone and Tony Morgan — of 4,922 who drove in pari-mutuel races on the continent last year, were able to accomplish that feat.

Points are awarded from 25 for finishing first down to 1 for 25th, with a 25-point bonus for making the list in all three categories. Manzi, driving primarily at the Meadowlands and Freehold Raceway, finished 2005 first in wins in North America with 727, fourth in money won by his mounts with $8,653,808, and 17th in driving percentages, with a .336 in-the-money average, for 81 points.

Dave Palone, HTA’s Driver of the Year in 1999, 2000, 2003 and 2004, finished second with 79 points, and Tony Morgan, who won the HTA honor in 1996, 1997 and 2002, was third with 66 points. Manzi also was named the U.S. Harness Writers’ Driver of the Year, and will receive his trophies at the Night of Stars Feb. 8 at Bellagio in Las Vegas. At 55, he is the oldest driver ever to win HTA’s prestigious honor.

Here are the top 10 in North America last year: