Ed Peters isn’t on the same schedule as the rest of us. The 53-year-old from Pelham, N.H., runs a bread distribution company, and not too long after you or I go to bed, he’s getting up to go to work.

Rather than just delegate everything to others, Peters prefers to be in the trenches. Most weekdays, he rises at 2:00 am to put together his orders of breads, rolls, pastries and the like, load them onto trucks and then deliver them to supermarkets, schools and other clients. 

“Sometimes a contest friend like Joe Koury will notice that I’m not involved in a big Sunday contest and ask, ‘Why aren’t you playing?’ On a typlcal Sunday,” Peters explained, “I’m sometimes asleep before a contest is over, so unless it’s a Pick & Pray, I stay away.”

Such a routine may not seem conducive to success in a year-long tourney grind that involves a whole lot of Sundays, but somehow Peters made it work, and when the flour had settled, he was the 2023 HorseTourneys Tour champion, earning a bonus of $26,600. It was something that Peters certainly didn’t envision at the start of the year.

“I never figured I’d be playing at the volume that other guys play,” he admitted. “I like to take a break in January and February, so I don’t play much at all then. And It’s still about ROI for me, I normally don’t even play the $350 Saturday game unless I qualify for it in the Early Bird feeder. I’m done with work at 10:30, so those Early Birds are great for me. If I qualify, I play. If I don’t, I do something else.”

So Peters was far from a regular contestant during the first half of 2023, and when he did take part, it was almost always with one entry. Nevertheless, he managed to finish first in two HT Tour events…

…and he got a second in another before June was complete.

At this point, Peters did a little rough math and realized something important. Since he hadn’t played very much, most of the other seven scores that got him to 67.692 points at the halfway mark were pretty weak.

“I knew then that if I could sneak in another win or a couple of seconds to have some tens and nines replace my twos and threes, I could move into one of the pay slots,” he said.

Peters did even better than that.

A September to remember vaulted Peters all the way into first place.

Feeling that he just might be able to see this thing through, Peters stepped up the frequency of his play. He bought into all Friday HT Tour games and all Sunday ones that were Pick & Prays. He continued to only play on Saturdays, though, if he qualified via the Early Birds. By the time the Breeders’ Cup has passed, Peters had relinquished his lead to the always-active Evan Trommer.

The “good news” for Peters was that, at this point in the year, the sun was setting earlier. Why was that important? The Sunday features were now ending earlier. Now he could stay up late enough to play even Live-format tourneys! And that’s what he did.

And since Peters still had a couple of modest showings from the first half that he could improve upon, he was able to widen his lead from there.

When it was over, Peters felt a sense of satisfaction not just about the Tour victory, but how he achieved it.

“I didn’t put $20,000 or anything like that into it, so I feel good about that,” he said. “I think people shouldn’t lose sight of what they’re spending. At that point, you’re not really playing for money, you’re playing just to say, ‘I won the Tour.’”

Ed and his wife Linda are nothing if not planners. When she schedules a weekend outing or a get-together with friends or family, she’ll note the date to Ed and say, “Don’t make plans.” He understands Immediately what that means regarding contest play.

By the same token, when a big contest is on the horizon, Ed will give Linda plenty of warning. Perhaps that’s one small reason they have been happily married for 23 years.

It also can’t hurt that Ed wins a lot. In 2017, he finished first in The BIG One at Laurel.

Next up for Peters is this weekend’s $250,000 Gtd. Flo-Cal Faceoff. Whenever there’s big money at stake, he likes to be part of the action.

“You guys have four contests now where the winners get what second-place in the NHC would pay,” he said. “I think that’s great.”

Peters can’t guarantee that he will be heavily involved in the 2024 HT Tour. That depends how things go for him in the early going. However, he does appreciate that it’s there.

“You don’t have to sign up or pay anything to take part in it. It’s a pure bonus…a ‘thank you.’”

On his end, Peters probably owes a thank you of his own to one of his New Hampshire friends for getting him excited about horse racing in the first place.

“When I was in my early 20s, a bunch of us would go to Rockingham Park in Salem for the 7:30 Friday night cards. We’d stay for a couple of races and then sort of make our plans from there, deciding which bar or which club we might go to. 

“I’d stay for two races at first…then four…then six…then the whole card. I’d tell my friends, ‘I’ll meet you at 11:30.’ I was still very casual about racing, but I had a friend who wasn’t casual. One summer we had a big Friday night at Rockingham–and by that, I mean we won about $800. ‘Peters, I’m picking you up at 6:30 tomorrow morning,’ he told me, ‘We’re going to Saratoga!’

“So we drive to Saratoga, and, three races in, we had blown the $800. But we stayed for the whole card and had a ball. It was Alabama Day 1994, and the big rivalry in that race was Heavenly Prize from New York versus Lakeway from California. Now I’m a Boston guy, but that day, I felt like a New York guy. We were standing near the turn, and I remember when Mike Smith on Heavenly Prize went by Lakeway, you could just feel the energy go through the crowd like a big wave. That was the moment I really became hooked on the sport.”

And now, Peters is hooked on contests.

“Nothing beats the strategy…nothing beats the excitement of playing in tournaments and seeing your name move up and down the leaderboard, race after race.”

To finish ahead of Ed Peters in 2023…you had to get up pretty early in the morning.