The first horse that the trainer Greg Peck entered in the Hambletonian also became the fastest in the race's 85-year history. Last year, Peck's Muscle Hill set a record for the one-mile distance, and his winning margin of six lengths was a fraction short of the record. It was a superb performance in what is known as the Kentucky Derby of harness racing. On Saturday, the Hambletonian will be held at the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, N.J., for the 30th consecutive year. Peck returns with a top contender in Holiday Road. He said he wants to win even more than last year, in large part because this edition may be the most important in track history. 'You wonder,' Peck said after a meeting of the standardbred industry at the Meadowlands on Thursday, 'is it going to be here next year?' These are extraordinary times for harness racing in New Jersey. The long-awaited report on gaming in New Jersey, commissioned in February by Gov. Chris Christie and released two weeks ago, recommended that the state quit operating the Meadowlands and rejected the idea of having slot machines there. Jon F. Hanson and Robert E. Mulcahy III, once the chairman and chief executive, respectively, of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, led the commission in producing the report. It offers more questions than answers, not only for state-run thoroughbred and harness racing, but also for Atlantic City, the uncompleted Xanadu entertainment project and the sports authority itself. The report calls into question the future of harness racing in the state and, by extension, its most important race. 'It's obviously a situation that is a concern,' Tom Charters, the executive director of the Hambletonian Society, which manages the race, said in an interview last week. 'But we have a two-year contract going forward and I fully expect it to be honored.' Charters said he would like to see the Hambletonian remain at the Meadowlands, and he anticipates the contract will be extended past 2012. He said he has not talked to other tracks about moving the race. The Hambletonian has become strongly identified with the Meadowlands, its home since 1981, but it was previously held for more than two decades in both DuQuoin, Ill., and Goshen, N.Y. The race is the property of the Hambletonian Society, a nonprofit organization that was created in 1925 to sponsor the race. Restricted to 3-year-old trotters (the other gait in harness racing is pacers), the Hambletonian has been the sport's richest race since its inaugural running in 1926 at the New York State Fair in Syracuse. It has been a mainstay on national television since relocating to the Meadowlands. As with the Kentucky Derby, its winners are christened million-dollar stallion prospects. Track officials expect a crowd of 30,000 Saturday, and in recent years approximately $8 million has been wagered on Hambletonian Day. In 2009, nearly a quarter of those bets came from simulcasts in France and Scandinavia, where trotting is extremely popular. 'It's like winning the Super Bowl in football, the Stanley Cup in hockey,' said Jimmy Takter, the Swedish-born trainer who won the 1997 Hambletonian with Malabar Man. 'It's the race that has the biggest impact in the world in harness racing.' When the Meadowlands opened in 1976, Gov. Brendan Byrne sought to bring the Hambletonian there. Alongside the prestigious race, the Meadowlands became the premier site for harness racing. With its one-mile oval, it changed a sport where half-mile tracks were standard. Thoroughbreds began racing at the Meadowlands that fall, but Monmouth Park, further south in Oceanport and its predecessor on the racing calendar, has always been the more popular home for that breed. But the quality of the harness meet at the Meadowlands has gradually declined, to the point where its supremacy finds challengers and the state expects significant reform. Once a big moneymaker, the Meadowlands lost nearly $10 million overall last year. The reasons are many and in some cases outside the control of those in the sport: the drop in popularity of harness racing, greater competition from other forms of gambling, the rise of racetracks with casinos (known as 'racinos') like Yonkers and Pennsylvania's Chester, and the state's slow introduction of off-track wagering parlors. In 1977, the Meadowlands drew an average attendance of 17,606 over 181 dates. Last year, it drew an average of 2,897 over 147 dates. The fact that people can now bet over the Internet and telephone is one significant reason for the decline. But the quiet inside the large facility on race night speaks loudly. The Meadowlands actually draws more fans than other standardbred sites, where slot machines inflate purses but push aside much of the interest in the horses on the track. This year, the Meadowlands is on pace to meet its total from last year of $2.4 million in nightly handle, approximately double its closest standardbred competitors, but down from its high of $3.74 million in 2000. The standardbred industry in the state looks more vulnerable than the thoroughbred one. The Hanson report says the largest part of the sports authority's losses come from harness racing. The report looks favorably on Monmouth Park's experiment with a shortened summer meet; its 50 days and $50 million in purses has attracted better horses and higher attendance and handle. On the other hand, the report calls harness racing a 'regional niche sport.' The standardbred industry interpreted the report as an indication that Christie wants to shut it down. 'I never expected that it would be as bad as it is,' Thomas Luchento, the president of the Standardbred Owners and Breeders Association of New Jersey, said of the report. Luchento said the standardbred industry would try to produce a plan that would suit Christie, which means a way for it to operate without state subsidies. He said that one idea was a shortened meet like Monmouth's of 100 days and $400,000 in daily purses. However, Luchento expressed unhappiness at what he perceived as the tone and nature of the report. He said he believed 'it was a stacked deck from the beginning' because the commission did not include any members of the horse industry. 'It was the horsemen that got the blame for this for not having a good business model, when we had nothing to do with it,' Luchento said. 'The legislators in the state would come in here, take the money, build other projects.' The report offers four potential options for harness racing, including moving a shorter meet to Monmouth Park; leasing the Meadowlands to the standardbred industry for $1 a year for the next three years, with the industry paying to maintain the facility; converting a commercial farm into a new track; and eliminating the sport. Luchento said he would find it difficult to say yes to almost any of them. According to a Rutgers University study from 2007, horse racing and related operations generate more than $780 million in economic activity each year. More than half of the industry's 13,000 jobs are tied to racetracks, breeding and training facilities. Horse farms represent more than a fifth of the state's 790,000 acres, and standardbreds make up two-thirds of the 12,500 racehorses on that land. Luchento said that the industry's economic impact at a time of high unemployment and budget deficits should not be ignored. But Mulcahy said the state's budget deficit was the reason horse racing must sustain itself. The Hanson report calls for a master plan in six months. The Hambletonian starts the clock. 'The state has to get out of the business,' Mulcahy said. 'That's really the answer. We can no longer subsidize any of these operations. We have to put them into a position where we can privatize them.' 