Little Iron Man

On a more or less typical working day this summer, Harness-Racing Driver Herve 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 around the track. His record for the day: three wins, two places and three shows in ten starts.

By 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? Herve 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: 'The key to this business is ownership." Herve should know. Though he is best known for his exploits on the track, he also doubles as a trainer and an owner.

For all its big 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 a crap game." Filion, who won 17 races with him in '68, says fondly: "He was the gamest horse I ever saw."

A 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 Herve Hop. Rather than throw his horse off balance by using the reins to turn his head, Filion steers through heavy traffic by hopping his sulky two feet sideways with a strong jerk of his hips and legs.

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.

Such self-denial was the way of life at the farm in Angers, Quebec, where Filion was raised as one of ten children. His childhood, recalls a friend, was "three boys in a bed, two horses in a stall, that sort of thing." His father kept a few trotters on the farm, and Herve practically grew up in a sulky seat. "When I was a kid," he recalls, "I used to run all the way home at lunchtime to work with the horses and then run back to school. I didn't play hockey like the other kids. I went to the barns, nowhere else." He stopped going to school after the fifth grade and though his legs were still too short to reach the stirrups, he became a professional driver on the county-fair circuit at 13.

Herve has been a fierce competitor ever since. Between 1957 and 1964, in fact, he was suspended nine times in the U.S. and Canada for various rule infractions committed in his zeal to win. The biggest blow came in 1965 when the U.S. Trotting Association lifted his license for "repeated violations"--cutting off other drivers, for example, and betting on races. Stunned, Filion reformed and was eventually reinstated by the U.S.T.A. Ever since he has performed like a man possessed. Last summer he was upended in a nasty three-sulky accident that left him with torn shoulder ligaments and facial cuts that required seven stitches. Undaunted. Filion not only was back in the stirrups four days later but reeled off twelve victories in 18 starts. "I had to make up for lost time," he explained.

At 32, Filion figures that he still has plenty of time to better a lifetime record that now exceeds 4,000 victories. "I'm a winner," he says. "I'm like a hockey player who knows he's going to score a goal I know I'm going to win, and sometimes even the horse feels that too."

* A contest between undistinguished horses who carry a given price tag and may be "claimed" or purchased by any interested horseman.

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