Dick Graybill was in trouble, and he knew it.

Two years after open heart surgery, the Jackson Township horse breeder and trottingbred pony racer took quite a spill during a race in 2000.

“A horse came up behind me and pushed me right off the sulky seat,” Graybill said. “I fell to the ground, and it could have been bad, but somehow the other horses didn’t step on my chest. They stepped over me.

“Had one of them stepped directly on my chest, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Graybill broke his tailbone that day, the worst injury he’s suffered since he began racing horses in the 1950s.

Now 72, Graybill is still zipping around harness tracks in the Northeast and Midwest.

“I’m not even the oldest guy on the circuit,” Graybill said. “There are racers older than I am.”

From his Golden Pond stable near York County Airport in Thomasville, Graybill boasts two of the best trottingbred horses in the United States, Canada and Bermuda.

Golden Pond Champion won a national title on a quarter-mile track as a 2-year-old. And Golden Pond Debonair is ranked ninth in the nation among 3-year-olds.

Unlike thoroughbred racing, where a saddled jockey rides a horse, harness racing features drivers seated atop small carts known as sulkies.

In the late 1950s, trottingbred racing began as pony harness racing. Riders used Shetland, Welsh and Hackney ponies to trot around half-mile tracks in the Midwest, Northeast and Canadian province of Quebec.

In the early 1960s, those ponies began being crossed with standardbred horses to produce stronger and faster competitors.

The foundation for the trottingbred was the standardbred, and Hanover Shoe Farms in Adams County has long been a Mecca for standardbred horse breeding.

Located between Hanover and Littlestown on Route 194, the legendary farm has bred horses that have won close to $400 million, while various offspring of its horses have claimed nearly $1 billion.

Last fall, Windsong’s Legacy — a Hanover-bred, bay-colored colt — became the first horse since 1972 to win trotting’s Triple Crown after capturing the Hambletonian, the Yonkers Trot and the Kentucky Futurity.

Like its standardbred relative, the trottingbred competes in two forms of harness racing: trotting and pacing.

According to the U.S. Trotting Association, harness racing’s governing body, a trotter moves its front leg and the opposite rear leg at the same time. A pacer moves its two legs on the same side at the same time and in the same direction.

Graybill’s two top horses compete in the trotting category.

So what’s the difference between standardbreds and trottingbreds? Size more than anything.

According to the International Trotting and Pacing Association, standardbred horses stand an average of 60 inches tall, but a trottingbred horse can stand no taller than 51½ inches.

The trottingbred was recognized as an official breed by the American Horse Council in 1977. Trottingbreds generally live into their 20s, and their smaller size means lower feed budgets for owners.

“Speed is a big selling point for our sport,” said ITPA office manager Kathy Denesha, “but I think the biggest draw is how family oriented it is. Kids can race, parents can race and so can grandparents.”

Clearly, there’s no mandatory retirement age when it comes to trottingbred racing.

“I’ll ride until I can’t do it anymore. Horse racing just gets in your blood,” said Graybill, who was born in Winfield, Union County, but moved to York County when he was eight.

Graybill has a track at his family farm, but his competitive home is Gettysburg’s Land of Little Horses Farm Park on Glenwood Drive.

You can find Graybill there for six Sunday races during the season, which begins in the middle of this month. Races will be held in Gettysburg on June 5, June 19, July 17, July 31 and Aug. 21.

As part of the regional ITPA East circuit, Graybill will also race at Juniata Valley Downs in Newport, Perry County, the Frederick, Md., Fairgrounds, and at several New York state tracks.

“I just love the speed of the races,” Graybill said. “We have drivers of all ages. I think the youngest one is 11 or 12.”

Last weekend, Graybill took two of his horses to the ITPA’s spring sale at the fairgrounds in Lagrange, Ind., roughly 45 miles from Notre Dame’s campus in South Bend.

A spring snowstorm made the trip difficult, in terms of travel and the actual sale itself.

Graybill brought Golden Pond Becky Jo, a 16-year-old mare, and her 6-year-old son, Golden Pond Jo-Boy, with him to Indiana. They were scheduled to be sold Saturday afternoon.

“I wound up bringing both of them back home with me,” Graybill said. “There was so much sleet, rain and snow that a lot of people didn’t even make it to the sale. My horses weren’t bringing enough in terms of bids for my liking to sell them out there, so they came back home.”

Graybill said he’s selling Becky Jo — who is also the mother of Champion and Debonair — to a friend in Newport, Perry County. Jo Boy will wind up being sold to another of Graybill’s central Pennsylvania friends.

“We’re just cutting back a little bit,” Graybill said.

Based on previous ITPA sales, no one gets rich from trottingbred transactions.

“Some will go for close to $3,000, while others go for $300 or $400,” Denesha said. “The average price is probably around $900. We’re a very affordable sport.”

Why such a relatively low selling price?

“It’s mainly because unlike standardbreds, trottingbreds don’t have the capability of winning large prize money,” Denesha said. “Also, the horse’s small stature turns some people off.”

Not Graybill, and certainly not retired New York rider Ken Martin, who told Hoofbeats magazine why trottingbreds are so much fun to be around.

“Every one of the big (standardbred) drivers has been on a trottingbred at some time,” Martin told the magazine. “Our horses always have more speed, more drive and more heart than these guys expect, because they look at this pony and say, ‘What the hell can this be?’ Then the bell sounds and the ponies take off like the big ones.”

Dick Graybill understands. He can’t imagine a time when he’s a spectator instead of a competitor.

“It’s no fun for me to go watch,” Graybill said. “I want to participate, and I’ll do it just as long as I can sit in the sulky.”

Reach Dave Sottile at 771-2063 or dave@ydr.com.