Jimmy Jordan’s path to the Harness Racing Museum’s Hall of Immortals started with a trip from his father’s Illinois farm to bring a horse to an owner in Norway, Maine, and ended as one of the sport’s top national drivers before his final race at Yonkers (New York) Raceway in 1975.
Jordan was posthumously inducted into the hall on Sunday after a career in which he recorded 1,300 wins and accounted for $3.4 million in purses.
Jordan, who died in 1977 at age 72, established his national career by racing at the major racetracks on the East Coast, but several early years in Maine aided his success.
“Although the purses were small, my dad said that the experience he received while in Maine was second to none,” Jordan’s son, Jim Jordan Jr., wrote in a blog for themainespirit.blogspot.com.
“Undoubtedly, his time in Maine helped to formatively begin a career that brought him the respect and admiration of industry insiders and fans alike,” Jordan Jr. added.
In Illinois, Jimmy Jordan worked with his father, raising quarter horses, which Jordan raced at county fairs. A Maine man purchased one of Jordan’s favorite horses, Frank DeForest, in May 1923, and Jordan brought the horse to Norway and began a job as the horse’s groom.
He eventually earned a ride and went on to finish second at a race in Waterville at age 19.
Jordan continued to drive and train horses in Maine and moved to Lewiston before being recruited to drive and train horses in 1940 at the then new Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, New York.
His career was interrupted by three years of service in the U.S. 3rd Army under Gen. George Patton during World War II when he served as a tank driver.
After the war, he resumed his harness racing career and enjoyed some of his best racing years in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Recognition of Jordan’s career for the harness racing hall would not have occurred without the efforts of Steve Thompson of Hallowell, a retiree and harness racing historian who runs a website, losttrottingparks.com, that provides a history of Maine harness racing with features on such topics as early agricultural societies and their trotting parks and profiles of Maine horsemen.
Another Hallowell resident, Kirk Rowell, purchased a painting of a horse and driver several years ago and contacted Thompson through his website to get more information about the painting.
The horse’s name was Pershing Hanover, and the red plate below the painting identified the driver as Jimmy Jordan.
Through Internet searches Thompson discovered the horse was owned by Gordon Drew, a past president of Windsor Fair who had hired Jordan to drive and train the horse. Thompson was curious about Jordan and started to do more research.
“Things started unfolding, and in a month, Jimmy Jordan’s son emailed because he too was seeking more info on his dad’s career,” Thompson said.
Thompson’s research uncovered details of one of the nation’s top harness racing drivers of the 1940s and 1950s.
“Everyone I talked to in Maine recalled how he was not only an excellent driver, but a wonderful man,” Thompson said.
That prompted Thompson, a member of the harness racing hall, to nominate Jordan for induction.
Some of Jordan’s milestones as a driver include:
— Driving Sunny Boy to a 1¼-mile world trotting record for a half-mile track in 1941 in 2 minutes, 40.25 seconds.
— The nation’s second leading money winner in 1952.
— A victory in 1958 at the $108,565 Messenger Stakes at Roosevelt while driving O’Brien Hanover.
— An original member of the United States Trotter Association’s 1,000-race winners club.
— A total of 1,300 career victories that do not include his wins in Maine in 1923-38 because the USTA was not founded until 1939.
