The Life and Legacy of
Peter The Great
Book:
The Life & Legacy of
Peter The Great
Roxy Publishing
Copyright 2006
Terry Motycka
All rights reserved
Table of Contents
The Forebears
The Early Years
The Racing Years
The Breeding Years
Peter’s Grave & Monuments
Honors & Accolades
Peter’s Progeny
Peter The Great is an honoree in three Halls of Fame:
National Hall of Fame of the Trotter in Goshen, NY, inducted in 1953.
Michigan Harness Racing Hall of Fame in Okemos, MI, inducted in 1986.
Indiana Standardbred Hall of Fame in Anderson, IN, inducted in 1993.
The author & publishers are grateful to the Harness Racing Museum & Hall of Fame, Goshen, New York, copyright holder of The American Trotter by John Hervey, which acknowledges the author’s use of material from that book.
A horse is a horse, of course, of course...
Or so the saying goes. But this horse was truly a special horse: born in 1895 on a 600-acre horse farm that sat in the middle of the present-day campus of Western Michigan University, the young colt named Peter The Great first earned fame by setting a world record in the top harness race in the nation for three-year old trotters.
As a four-year old, Peter The Great continued to amaze racing fans with his wins while simultaneously embarking on his career as a sire, a career that made him one of the most renowned sires of all time in the world of harness horse racing.
Kalamazoo was the birthplace of an extraordinary horse whose offspring would come to dominate the harness horse racing world, a world where Peter The Great’s name is still instantly recognized and his fame as a sire well-known. Virtually all of the great trotters of the twentieth century trace directly back to Peter The Great, as do those of today.
Top photo: Peter The Great at Laurel Hall Farm with his caretaker, Jake Councilman, circa 1918-1923. Courtesy, U.S. Trotting Association.
Bottom photo: Peter The Great at Laurel Hall Farm in Indianapolis, circa 1918-1923. Courtesy, U.S. Trotting Association.
