George Casale says Orange County is built for speed

By Geri Corey GOSHEN — George Casale, an attorney from Uniondale, Long Island, came well qualified to the latest Goshen Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting to talk about the area’s racing and flying opportunities.

Among his credentials, Casale is executive director of the Standardbred Owners Association of New York, a board member on the Goshen Historic Track, general counsel to the Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame, and sits on the board of the Orange County Pilot’s Association.

Casale brought the audience down memory lane, mentioning all the great cowboy shows from early TV fame, like Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry, Cisco Kid, the Lone Ranger and many more totaling 30 shows in the 1950s. It’s no wonder with this kind of influence, that in the early 80s, he talked himself into buying a race horse. He drove on the amateur level for the next 15 years.

To answer a frequently asked question, “Is harness racing fixed?” Casale replied with a personal view: “It’s exciting and exhilarating — with control by a three-inch steel bit in front of you and feeling the snorting of warm breath behind you! Could it be fixed? Absolutely not!”

Harness racing started on the streets with farmers going back and forth to church each week, always racing each other on the way home. That evolved to farmers asking themselves, “How can I make my horse go faster?” From there, racing was moved to a track.

All standardbred horses trace their lineage back to Messenger, a thoroughbred, which came to the US from England in 1788. Hambletonian, known as the father of today’s harness horses, was born in 1849; he was a descendant of Messenger. The standardbred is an American horse, Casale noted.

“The Hambletonian was our big race from the 1930s to the 1950s, held at the Good Time Park in Goshen. It must have been bustling here,” Casale commented.

The Good Time Park, located adjacent to the Connector Road, was a mile-long track that was used for harness racing until 1956, when track owner William H. Cane passed away. The Hambletonian race was then moved out of New York State.

The Goshen Historic Track, located on Park Place, has been in operation since 1838 and received National Landmark status in 1966. According to Casale, it’s the only sports complex to have this distinction in the US.

“One-hundred years from now, the track will look exactly the same," he said. "We’ll always have harness racing in Goshen.”

As for the Orange County Airport, Casale told the audience not to underestimate the importance of small planes.

General Aviation, which is everything except scheduled airline flights, provides a long list of services, including an economic boost to the county. Among the services are emergency medical, like an air ambulance and transport of human organs; law enforcement agencies for public protection; agricultural aircraft operation to sow seeds and protect crops; search and rescue; pet rescue; sightseeing and tourism; power line and pipe line patrols; and heavy lift helicopters, for instance, in raising and lowering cables.

Businesses also use the Orange County Airport to enable employees to visit factories and suppliers, make sales calls and be transported between different facilities.

Orange County Airport, located on Dunn Road in Montgomery, has a charter school, flight school and a restaurant.

Little planes are safe, too. “They never want to go down,” he said.

Explaining that they are technologically more sophisticated than commercial planes, Casale said, “All new devices are tried on little planes first, because it’s too costly to install commercial planes with new technology for testing purposes.”

Casale told the audience, “When you see a small plane in the sky, make sure you say a prayer. First because it’s generating revenue for Orange County, and second, it might be me flying that plane!”