REMI BELLOCQ: GENERATIONAL TALENT ON DISPLAY AT THE MEADOWLANDS FOR THE 100TH HAMBLETONIAN CELEBRATION
“Osmosis,” said Remi Bellocq, when asked how he learned to draw ...
EAST WINDSOR, NJ -- July 25, 2025 -- “Osmosis,” said Remi Bellocq, when asked how he learned to draw. Bellocq is the son of legendary cartoonist Pierre “Peb” Bellocq, whose clever images of racing’s people and horses graced the pages of Thoroughbred publications the The Morning Telegraph and its sister paper, The Racing Form, for decades.
The elder Bellocq’s images of harness racing were featured in the décor of the original Meadowlands Racetrack, and were moved to the new building in 2013. Pierre is no longer creating new works, but the younger Bellocq was tapped to create a triptych of images to commemorate the 100th Hambletonian, to be contested on August 2.
“Tom Charters (Executive Vice President of the Hambletonian Society) called me with the idea of doing some artwork to commemorate the hundredth Hambletonian,” said Remi Bellocq. “I asked Tom if he wanted to get in touch with my father. He’s 98 years old, still bucking and kicking, lives in Princeton. Tom said, ‘No, actually I want to talk to you about it.’
“I draw for the Thoroughbred Daily News and Florida Horse so I’ve kind of picked up the baton a little bit from my father. I said I’d love to work on this project.” The images are three individual works depicting each of the 99 winners at the three primary venues at which the Hambletonian has been held, Good Time Park in Goshen, New York, Du Quoin State Fair in Illinois and The Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
“Tom kind of laid out the ideas and it’s [nearly] 100 horses; at first, we wanted to do a mural but went with the idea of three posters so we could break it up,” said Bellocq. “Plus, it was a natural theme based on the three primary tracks that hosted the race, so that worked out well.”
Bellocq was able to call on his “osmosis,” education, as well as drafting course work, undertaken at his father’s suggestion, as a student at the University of Arizona racetrack management program. “I would occasionally do a drawing for the school paper and occasionally I got a call from Dean Hoffman to do a drawing for Hoof Beats. There was never any kind of intention of becoming a full-fledged cartoonist. Probably back ten years or so it started becoming more and more a thing I loved to do.”
Bellocq, who worked at Garden State Park (where he saw several Breeders Crowns), the national Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association and is now with the Equine Studies program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, finds himself drawing more in recent years. “I learned from my work and now it’s kind of more a fulltime kind of thing, coming close to retirement.”
He estimates that each of the Hambletonian works took about 80-90 hours each and required close detail as well as a touch of whimsy. “As a one panel cartoonist, you are basically doing the set up and punch line all in the same frame, like designing a set on a stage,” says Bellocq. “When I lay out a cartoon, if I have a gag or an idea, it is how you deliver it. Like a stand-up comedian, you may have the greatest joke in the world, but if it has poor delivery, no one will get it.
With the Hambletonian works depicting 99 horses in total, Bellocq had to find a balance between accuracy and delivery. “I didn’t want to do more than 30 or so horses per image, because if you don’t reduce, it’s just a blur with that many horses and that many angles. [The] sulkies ended becoming very whittled down, where basically you can draw the wheel and the shaft and it’s not really complicated. We have to have some suspension of disbelief, these are cartoon horses. The lines are fewer; the simpler, the better, for a poster like this. What we focused on was making sure the colors of the horses were accurate and of course, the driver colors. For little touches, like the fillies, I put pink on their hooves.
While the equipment used in harness racing can sometimes be complicated, Bellocq completed the Hambletonian images with the simplest of tools – pen, paper and ink. “I really pattern after what my father would do and the style I inherited from him is pen and ink, a dip pen, old school. The lines are much, much more human; it’s not artificial intelligence. It’s India ink and a pen with a quill tip. You have to use high quality India ink, which is very opaque, waterproof, permanent.
The number of pen strokes Bellocq used to create the Hambletonian triptychs might be roughly equal to the number of hoofbeats hitting the track in the first 99 editions of the race. “There is a lot of back and forth, but the quality of the line is so much better, darker, clearer and won’t fade over time,” says Bellocq. “It’s such a permanent type of ink and you can paint over it. I used a type of paper called Arches [Aquarelle type]; it will hold up well if you do a wash with water color, it won’t start buckling and crinkling.”
Because there is no room for revision after pen is put to paper, there were regular revisions in pencil prior to the inking step, with input by Charters and Moira Fanning, Hambletonian Society Chief Operations Officer. “Once things like how I’m facing the grandstand, how the horses are positioned, all the things Tom and Moira wanted in the drawing … were ok, I can go ahead and ink,” said Bellocq.
For a one-minute time lapse of Bellocq’s work creating a single panel of the triptych, Click here.
Posters of the first of the three images, Good Time Park in Goshen, were given out to fans attending Hambletonian Maturity night at The Meadowlands on July 12. The Du Quoin version will be available to fans on Hambletonian elimination Saturday, July 26, and the poster depicting the Meadowlands years will be available at the track on the day of the 100th Hambletonian, August 2.
Bellocq will be available to sign posters from 2-4:00 p.m. in the simulcast area (near Dunkin Donuts) on Hambletonian day. There will also be a limited edition signed fine art edition available for those interested in purchasing these unique commemorative items.
