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Harness racing returns to Hawkinsville each winter Travels with Charlie Veteran Georgia journalist Charles Seabrook has covered native wildlife and environmental issues for decades. For “Travels with Charlie,” he visits and photographs communities throughout the state.
You might not equate the city of Hawkinsville in Pulaski County with horse racing. But each year in early winter, the mid-Georgia city is the destination for numerous harness racehorse owners and trainers from
up north as far as Canada — bringing with them dozens of their most prized pacers and trotters. They spend the winter in
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Hawkinsville training the horses before heading back north in spring to race at harness tracks with pari-mutuel betting. Hawkinsville’s mild winters, good grazing land and other amenities draw the harness racing devotees, but the biggest lure is the city’s superb Lawrence L. Bennett Harness Horse Training Facility. The sprawling facility is there primarily because of Hawkinsville’s early devotion — dating back to the 1890s — to harness racing. That early connection led to a grant in 1975 to build the Lawrence Bennett complex, which opened in 1977 on the city’s outskirts. It’s now the only such facility in Georgia and one of the top Standardbred harness horse training centers in the eastern United States. (The Standardbred is best known as a harness racing breed — well-muscled, long body, slightly heavier than a Thoroughbred, solid legs Top down, Rest time in stalls Tender loving care for racehorse after daily work out
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MARCH 2022 | AtlantaSeniorLife.com
Entrance to Lawrence Bennett Training Facility, 290 Abbeville Hwy, Hawkinsville, GA Training on the one-mile track, Lawrence Bennett Training Facility
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