McCaffrey's Advantage

"I am encouraged," McCaffrey said last Saturday, after the elim. "This is my first time [at the Meadowlands] and pretty much out of Illinois. I had three starts in Canada, but that is about it for 16 years. I am a little nervous racing here. When you aspire to be a trainer you aspire to race good horses and to race here at the Meadowlands. The Meadowlands is the Mecca of harness racing.

"When I walked into the paddock here it brought back memories of the first time I ever walked into a paddock and the first time I raced a horse," he continued. "It is all-new. I am just as nervous tonight as I was in 1991. It is just as much of a thrill and a rush tonight as that night."

McCaffrey's father, Joe, a philosophy professor, introduced the 39-year-old native of Davenport, Iowa, to harness racing when he was a teen-ager.

"I got my start at a little racetrack called Quad City Downs," he said. "It is long since gone. My Dad would take me to the track when I was a teen-ager. I went to college in Minnesota and I would come home during the summer and got involved at the track. I went to the University of St. Thomas [Minnesota] and majored in business. I then went to [State University of New York] Morrisville and learned everything I needed to [about horsemanship] and in 1990, 1991 branched out. I did not work for another trainer. I went right out on my own."

 

McCaffrey had one horse in his barn, a filly named Caduceus, whom he planned on taking to race at the smaller Illinois tracks. "[Instead] I took Caduceus to Maywood Park and it was like lightening in a bottle," he said. "We won our first five races in a row, so I decided to stay in Chicago. My barn grew slowly, but surely, and we now have 40 horses racing primarily at Maywood and Balmoral. They're mostly pacers, but I have a big mix of claimers, young racehorses and 2 year olds."

 

As McCaffrey's barn grew, he added training titles at Maywood Park in 1999 and 2004 to his resume. To date, he now has won more than 1,100 races and nearly $9 million in purses, nearly all of it in the confines of Illinois. His best known horse prior to Home Bed Advantage was Live Out Loud, a winner of $527,817, who also made his way to the Meadowlands but was campaigned by trainer Patrick Lachance while in New Jersey.

 

McCaffrey's journey to the Meadowlands began at the Cottonwood yearling sale in 2005. He and Bill Matz, who races as MJGB Stable, purchased a Cole Muffler yearling by the name of Cherry Tree Cole for $40,000. They would later change his name to Home Bed Advantage after dialogue between Jerry Seinfeld and George Castanza on one of their favorite episodes of Seinfeld. It was also homage to the horse's breeder, Alan Kirschenbaum, himself a sitcom producer.

At two, Home Bed Advantage was immediately impressive, scoring victories in his first eight starts, including the $40,000 Governor's Cup at DuQuoin and the $63,000 final of the Cardinal at Maywood, where he equaled the world record time of 1:52.4 for 2-year-old pacers on a half-mile track. At Balmoral Park, he won his elimination for the Orange and Blue by setting a new world record of 1:50.1 for a 2-year-old gelding on a mile track and captured the $285,000 final as well as the $50,000 Sarah Myers. His only defeat of the year was a second-place finish in the $135,000 American-National.

 

After three qualifiers at Balmoral Park this year, Home Bed Advantage hit the road and made his sophomore debut in a Berry's Creek elimination at the Meadowlands, in which he battled first up and finished third.

 

McCaffrey will continue his road trip with Home Bed Advantage this season as he works his way through the $1 million Meadowlands Pace, the Art Rooney, the Monticello Gold Rush, the Hoosier Cup and Flamboro Downs' Confederation Cup.

 
"Up until last year, the race I wanted to win was the Orange and Blue," McCaffrey said. "The purse is $285,000 and it is the premier race for 2-year-old colts and the premier race in Illinois. I won it last year with this horse. I guess now it would be the Meadowlands Pace." (Meadowlands press release)