As he started to explain, his voice hitched on emotion: “I lost my mom at 58 years old. She had a massive heart attack and died at Miami Valley in April. She had never had problems at all before that.
“And with me, I’ve had an ongoing neck injury that’s sidelined me a couple of times this year. I had a bad wreck at Scioto Downs several years ago and I got one disc that is kind of screwed up. It comes out as a pinched nerve and it really affects my left arm.
“They want to do an operation – they want to go in and grind some of the bone off – but we race so much and it’s hard to take all that down time.
“So I’ve raced with it, but sometimes it gets really, really bad. They had me on all kinds of medication and a month before we came to Dayton here I had to take three weeks off. I couldn’t pull with my left arm.”
But soon after that – when the harness season began at Dayton Raceway on Sept. 10 – that’s when things took a “weird” turn, as the 38-year-old driver from Washington Court House put it.
Opening night he won five races, the third of which – in the sulky behind Sports Band, a 3-year-old bay gelding – was the 2,000th victory in his career.
“The first couple of weeks of the meet I caught fire and it’s just stayed,” he said. “To be honest, I was even surprising myself. I was winning with horses that paid $50 and $80 to win. That doesn’t happen a lot. There were times after a race I’d say to myself, ‘Damn! How’d that horse race so good?’
“And I started to get some better horses from other trainers and it’s been kind of a snowball effect since.”
On Nov. 5, he won six races on a matinee card. After we talked the other night, he quickly put on his trademark red and white silks and went out and won five times.
That gave him 152 victories for the meet, putting him 56 ahead of second-place Dan Noble, the Xenia veteran who now races a more limited schedule while he trains horses, too.
Saturday night — when the 76-meet season ends in Dayton — Smith will be named the driving champion.
Six years ago he won his only other driving title — at Lebanon Raceway — and since then has finished second a couple of times at area tracks. But nobody in the five years at Dayton Raceway has had as many wins in a season as Smith has had this year.
“Man, I wanted this so bad,” he said. “Winning the title this year – after the way the season began and after all the struggles I had early in my career – is going to make it really sweet.”
Early introduction
Smith was introduced to racing by his late grandparents, Bill and Barbara Redman, who he said “pretty much raised me. My grandfather and I were sort of joined at the hip. We were close.”
His grandad was a retired engineer from General Motors and had two passions, horses and cars. He owned a few standardbreds which he kept stabled at the Fayette County Fairgrounds. It was there that he introduced his grandson to veteran trainers Alvin and Neal Long.
“I remember when I was just a little kid, probably 10 years old, they rigged a jog cart up for me where I could get into it and be OK,” Smith said.
Soon his grandparents and the Longs marveled at his abilities handling a horse.
“I’ll never forget this saying they had,” he said. “They told me I ‘had lightning in my hands.’ They said, ‘For some reason those horses will dig for you.’ I wasn’t old enough to drive in races yet, but I could train some of ‘em faster than they ever ran in an actual race.”
But Smith’s dreams were quickly jarred by reality
His grandpa died when he was 12.
And by the time he was an 18-year-old senior at Miami Trace High School, Smith and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Brandy, a junior at Washington High School, had a baby son, Parker.
“Brandy and I were both so young, it was tough,” Jeremy said. “We had to grow up quick. We wanted to be a good mom and dad and luckily we had our parents’ help. But it still wasn’t easy.”
They soon found some of their dreams had to be deferred.
Brandy had wanted to be a school teacher, but college was put on hold as she raised Parker and worked a full-time job.
Jeremy couldn’t make enough money racing in Ohio to support his family. In fact, he won just four times in the 65 starts he had in his first two years in the sport.
“I worked a regular job,” he said.” I drove a box truck for a place called Dynamics out of Cincinnati and mostly hauled stuff for Sears. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to get to work, so I had to get up at 4 or 5 a.m. Sometimes I might not get back home from racing until midnight. There were many, many, many days where I put in 20 hours.”
Seven years ago when Ohio allowed video lottery terminals (VLTs) at racetracks, everything changed. Purses went up and Smith eventually was able to devote himself full time to racing.
A few years ago Parker – who’s now 20 – took an interest in the sport and this past summer at Scioto Downs he had his first pari-mutuel win as driver.
Thursday night, father and son started side by side in Race 2. Jeremy guided Supreme Z Tam to a second-place finish while Parker ended up sixth with Tink And Tam.
Rekindling shelved dreams
Smith – who with Thursday’s victories had won 338 races this season and nearly $3 million in purses – tried to explain the love of racing that’s fueled him in good times and bad:
“I don’t know because I don’t do it, but to me it must be like what a lot of people on drugs chase. There’s no greater feeling to me than putting a horse’s nose on the starting gate. Right then, I’m not worried about my bills. I’m not worried about what happened today.
“For that two minutes, man, it’s just you and a horse doing the best you can.”
He’s done it well enough lately — he’s won over $2 million in purses the past four years in a row — that he and Brandy have been able to rekindle some of those shelved dreams.
He now restores muscle cars, many of which he “flips” when the work is done.
“I guess you could say I’m a speed junkie, whether it has a motor or goes on four legs,” he grinned.
He said his wife is now going to the University of Cincinnati-Chillicothe.
“Brandy’s going to be a teacher,” he said proudly.
Saturday night he said many family members and friends will be a Dayton Raceway to see him win the crown:
“I’ve wanted this so bad and waited so long. I wish my grandparents could be here, but I’ll be thinking of them.
“Christmas and everything was good this year, but this — especially with the way the year began — is going to be the best present I could ever get.
“Dude, it’s going to feel great!”
It’s like he doesn’t want the year to end.
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