100th running of the Hambletonian marks a century of the biggest event in harness racing

Growing up in a family of horsemen in Ontario, John Campbell knew how prestigious the Hambletonian was. Then he saw good friend Ray Remmen win the first to take place at the Meadowlands in 1981.

“It was beyond a big deal,” Campbell said. “It was something special.”

On Saturday, the biggest event in harness racing celebrates a centennial anniversary with the 100th running of Hambletonian. While harness racing, like its thoroughbred equivalent, no longer holds the same prominence it once did in the U.S. sporting landscape, the storied history of the Hambletonian and its evolution to grow interest in Europe are responsible for its longevity.

“To have this big event still going on 100 years, it’s something that I’m sure they didn’t even envision when it was formed,” said Campbell, a Harness Racing Hall of Fame driver who won the Hambletonian a record six times and participated a record 32 consecutive times from 1983-2014. “It's the consistency of it. They raced it no matter what, through the Depression, through World War II, so it was always there.”

Campbell is now president and CEO of the Hambletonian Society that has shepherded the race named for the founding sire of standardbred horses through changing times. The purse is the sport's richest at $1 million, a long way from the nearly $75,000 on the line during the inaugural rendition in 1926 at the New York State Fair in Syracuse.

The Hambletonian bounced around to Lexington, Kentucky; Goshen, New York and Du Quoin, Illinois, before finding a home in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

“Even during the war, they did have to because of gas rationing take it to Yonkers,” said Tom Charters, who worked at the Hambletonian Society from 1984-2017, including a lengthy stint as president. “That’s part of the charm of it, I think: the multiple venues and where it’s gone and where it’s been.”

Another charm? The winning horse gets to drink out of the trophy. That is something Charters saw pictures of and made sure would become part of the Hambletonian ceremony — with the name of the race and the horse logo always facing the cameras.

“It’s become as symbolic as drinking milk at Indianapolis, for me, anyway,” Charters said, referring to the Indy 500 tradition.

Campbell has his favorite memories, notably, he said, “Winning." His first victory with Mack Lobell in 1987 and winning with Tagliabue— trained by his brother, Jim, and named after longtime NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue — in '95 stand out as special, along with 2006 with Glidemaster to revitalize his career after injury.

Chris McErlean, who worked at the Meadowlands from 1992-2007, remembers filly Continentalvictory beating the colts in ‘96, amateur Malvern Burroughs winning with Malabar Man in ’97 and Swedish owner/trainer/driver Stefan Melander taking the race in 2000 with Scarlet Knight following efforts to encourage European participation.

“It made it a big international sensation,” McErlean said. "He had a lot of international interest.”

It has garnered so much interest across Scandinavia and even France that of the 10 horses in the Hambletonian this year, nine have European trainers.

Moira Fanning, who has worked at the society since 1987 and has been chief operating officer since 2017, expects more than $9 million to be wagered worldwide on the 100th Hambletonian. Fanning credits crossover horse betting from Saratoga Race Course and national television for keeping the event in the spotlight internationally, even though the on-track attendance is now expected to be 8,000-10,000.

At its height in 2005, a crowd of 31,000 packed the old Meadowlands — and the current limit is roughly a third of that.

“Harness racing is a niche kind of regional sport. It has lost ground. Tracks have closed,” Fanning said. “Racing had a wonderful 200-year gambling monopoly that it no longer has, so it has taken a lot of work to keep it prominent and keep it on national TV and keep the big days big.”

Essentially the Kentucky Derby of the harness world, Fanning said the Hambletonian might be the one trotters race known in the mainstream public. Inside the industry, it remains a big deal and something special.

“Even though the sport in general’s been challenged and it maybe is not at the peaks it used to be, the Hambletonian is still the biggest thing, the biggest prize out there,” McErlean said. “It almost has as much international cache as it does prominence over here because of its longstanding history and being the richest race, being the biggest race on the calendar.”

AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing

FILE - Muscle Massive drinks from the Hambletonian trophy cup after winning the Hambletonian harness horse race Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010 at Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun, File)

FILE - Tagliabue, with driver John Campbell, wins the $1 million Cadillac Hambletonian at the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, N.J., Saturday, Aug. 5, 1995. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun, File)

FILE - Pinkman (2), driven by Brian Sears, leads Mission Brief (4), driven by Yannick Gringras, and The Bank (1), driven by Johnny Takter, on the way to winning the Hambletonian harness horse race Saturday, Aug. 8, 2015, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun, File)

FILE - Malvern Burroughs celebrates after crossing the finish line with Malabar Man to win the $1 million Hambletonian at Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, N.J., Saturday, Aug. 9, 1997. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer, File)

FILE - Broad Bahn drinks out of the cup after winning the Hambletonian harness horse race Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011, at Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, N. J. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun, File)

FILE - Glidemaster (8), driven by John Campbell, pulls away from Chocolatier (10), driven by Doug R. Ackerman and Blue Mac Lad (2), driven by George Brennan, to win the Hambletonian harness race Saturday, Aug. 5, 2006 at Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun, File)

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 27, 2026--

Ahrefs, a leading marketing platform, today released its Q1 2026 AI Search Benchmark Report, a data-driven analysis of how AI platforms surface and cite brands in responses.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260526119691/en/

The report covers 13 studies, drawing insights from multiple datasets, including 146 million search result pages, 730,000 AI responses, and original experiments run by Ahrefs researchers.

In what is possibly the most notable finding, a study of 75,000 brands found that YouTube mentions correlated more strongly with AI brand visibility than any other metric. By contrast, a site's link volume and total page count showed only weak correlation.

In another study, Google's AI Overviews were shown to have reduced clicks to top-ranking content by 58%.

The report's authors used aggregated Google Search Console data across 300,000 keywords, comparing click-through rates in December 2023 (pre-AI Overviews) with those in December 2025.

Additional key findings from the report include:

“As brand discovery spreads across AI platforms that each behave differently, tracking and growing online visibility has fundamentally changed,” said Glen Allsopp, Head of Marketing Strategy & Research at Ahrefs. “I expect the teams that win will continue to follow and learn from the data, while prioritizing building genuine authority in their industry.”

The full report is available at ahrefs.com/ai-search-benchmark-q1-26

About Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a bootstrapped, profitable marketing software company with over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. It's powered by one of the largest independent web indexes (170 trillion pages) and AI visibility databases (400M monthly AI prompts). The company has continued to invest steadily in new capabilities, including AI-driven monitoring and analytics.

One of 13 studies documenting AI search in Ahrefs' new report

Ahrefs AI Search Benchmark Report