Over the last year or so, Caitlin Clark has made women’s basketball front-page news, first as a member of the Iowa Hawkeyes, and now as point guard with the Indiana Fever. To fans of horse racing I ask, Is Brett Beckwith the Caitlin Clark of harness racing?
They are virtually the same age (Clark 22, Beckwith 21). They both participate in sports overshadowed by higher-profile, similar competition. They both set eye-catching records.
And the word on the backstretch at Saratoga Harness is that it’s only a matter of time before Beckwith has a national profile as a preeminent driver.
Beckwith grew up at the racetrack; his mother, Melissa, is a prominent trainer, his father Mark a successful driver. And the pedigree goes back even further: Melissa’s father, Jerry Silverman, is a Hall of Fame trainer, her brother a trainer/driver, and Mark’s father and grandfather were both harness horsemen.
Yet while growing up in Saratoga Springs, Beckwith showed little interest in joining the family business. He played basketball for the Blue Streaks and had an eye on college.
“I wanted to study computer science,” he says. “I was a little bit of a nerd.”
Beckwith’s career path shifted one night at the Meadowlands, the preeminent harness track in the United States, located in East Rutherford, NJ.
“I was watching my grandfather [Silverman] who was still training horses at the time,” Beckwith says. “All of a sudden, I fell in love with the sport and wanted to do something more hands-on with the horses. I also wanted to do something in common with my father—when I was growing up we had basketball.”
It was a good call.
Beckwith began driving professionally only three years ago, when he was 18, and in 2023 his purse earnings hit the $4 million mark, a remarkable achievement for someone at the start of his career. He also finished second in the drivers standings at Saratoga Harness that year and at the end of May, he topped the local leaderboard with 157 wins from 554 starts for a win percentage of 28.3. In Saratoga alone, he’s earned more than $1 million in purses. In both categories, he’s significantly ahead of his closest rivals.
And when I showed up one warm May afternoon to see the young, record-breaking driver, he had already ridden one of his parents’ horses in a qualifying heat and was two hours away from that day’s post time. The Saturday card was comprised of 13 races—Beckwith was competing in all of them. By the end of the night, he’d racked up three wins, three seconds and a third.
Four of those in-the-money finishes came with horses trained by one of his parents. “They have about 25 horses, and I drive all of them,” Beckwith says. “Sometimes I have to take off to ride a different horse in a race, but most of the time, I try to drive for them.”
He’s in a position to be selective; in addition to his parents, he also chooses to drive for local trainers Jackie Greene and Kevin McDermott—who, in separate conversations, used identical words to describe why Beckwith is so good on their horses.
Says McDermott, who’s been training horses for decades, “He doesn’t panic. He’s patient, and nothing seems to faze him. He just takes it all in stride.”
Greene and her family lived next door to the Beckwiths for a time, and her daughter used to babysit him. “He comes from a family of well-respected horsemen, and he’s so level-headed and patient,” she says. “That goes a long way, especially on a half-mile track like Saratoga’s.”
Last summer, McDermott’s daughter, Mary, was instrumental in creating an event that packed the stands and the apron at Saratoga Harness. Thoroughbred jockey Flavien Prat, whose father and brother train trotters in France, took on Beckwith in a match race to raise money for local nonprofits.. Beckwith took the tilt, and the event raised $15,000 that was divided between Faith’s House, a low-cost child-care and education facility that serves children of workers on the Saratoga backstretch, and the Franklin Community Center, which provides local residents with a food pantry, after-school programs and distribution center for clothing and household items.
“Brett was 100 percent for it,” says Mary. “He also donated his purse money.”
A horsewoman herself, Mary uses the same language that her father and mother did to describe the young driver. “He is so calm, cool and collected,” she says. “He drives one of our horses, Reign of Honor, and it’s a blessing when he’s on him.”
Another match race is planned for this summer, and the event will undoubtedly once again pack Saratoga Harness with people who don’t ordinarily cross the street from Saratoga Race Course. Beckwith hopes that promotions like this, and premier races like the Joe Gerrity Jr. Memorial Race on July 20, will expand the audience for standardbred races.
“I’m biased,” he says, smiling. “I like it here better than at the Thoroughbred track. There’s only 10 minutes between races, which is better for bettors, and the focus is really on the horses.”
While Beckwith is already a star in the world of harness racing, both McDermotts say it’s only a matter of time before he’s a household name as well.
“Watch out for Brett Beckwith,” says Mary. “He’s going to get bigger and bigger. We’re blessed to have him, but that won’t last. He’s going to go on the Grand Circuit and trainers will snap him up.”
Her father agreed.
“Brett’s got exceptional hands, and he’s going to end up at the Meadowlands and on the Grand Circuit,” he says. “The sky’s the limit for Brett.”