Located in Georgia's Magnolia Midlands, Hawkinsville is known as the "Harness Horse Capitol" of Georgia
and has been a winter home for harness horse training since 1920, serving horsemen from northern United
States and Canada. Hawkinsville in Pulaski County began the affair with harness racing in 1894, when
Pulaski County Fair Association held their first official harness races.
They have raced once a year ever since around the first of April, the weather in Hawkinsville seldom freezes, it
is bright and sunny most of the time, making ideal conditions for training.
Once in a while there is a little breeze or an occasional rain. Everyone is
helpful and friendly, and all your basic needs can be found in the
various business in the County and City of 9,000 people.
I have been training horses in Hawkinsville for 8 seasons and have
been spending a week on vacation here for 10 years. I have visited
other training centers and personally I don't feel you will find a better
training facility anywhere. With the natural red clay mile track and the
1/2 mile all-weather track I seldom miss a day jogging. I find my horses
stay sound and come home ready to race. Grain, feed, hay, are very
reasonable with all being grown locally.
MANAGERS COMMENTS
MANAGERS HISTORY
We, Mac and Ann Lilley operators of the Lawrence L. Bennett Harness Horse
Training Facility, have actively been involved with the harness horse industry
since 1973 fulltime and before then only part time owning and training one
harness horse for fun. Now as owners of Mac Lilley Farms Ltd, a 250 acre
Harness Horse Breeding and Training Facility at Dutton, Ontario in Canada. Today
we take it all more seriously, each year breeding around 250 standardbred broodmares
commercially by pacing stallions(Rambaran, Bo Knows Jate, Kettle Bee, Village Barrister
and Village Jeffereson) presently standing for public service at our farm.
We have a broodmare band of 25, plus 40 horses in training on the 1/2 mile elevated,
stone dust track. Several other horses are trained there by trainers renting
stabling. All race horses are raced at various tracks in Canada such as Mohawk,
Woodbine, Windsor, Hiawatha, London, Elmira and Dresden. These tracks being
located in a hub, the farthest away being Woodbine 120 miles and the closest,
London at 30 miles. We have five sons, one in construction and 4 who love
the harness horse industry as much as we do and are making harness horse racing
and training their occupation. We previously had been spending a one week vacation in
Hawkinsville, Georgia for 10 years and now manage the training center and have made Hawkinsville
our winter home, training a few horses but leaving the rest home for our son Jeff, his wife
Ruleen and their sons Alex and Gerald to take care of. We have found the weather super nice,
the track great for conditioning our horses and the facility excellent to work from. The
people of Hawkinsville are very courteous, helpful, and extremely warm and welcoming.