The great bass line that every music fan knows as the intro to "Radar Love" was booming across the big arena, but Paul Martin Jr. had no time for air guitar.

His hands were full with the reins that held Linus and Amigo, each weighing in at about 1,100 pounds, and both were heading for the end zone — or at least, around the next obstacle up ahead of them.

And while New Holland resident Martin, seated, held on and drove as fast as he could, 22-year-old Natalie Krak of Lititz navigated, helping to keep the two-human, two-horse team speeding along.

Welcome to carriage racing — a sport that, even when it's just an exhibition, is not for the faint of heart.

"These guys are definitely athletes," the 62-year-old Martin, president and auctioneer with Martin Auctioneers Inc., said this week, pointing to the two German sport ponies ahead of him, as he prepared to race at the state Farm Show here.

Across two days at the Farm Show, the Martin/Krak team and several others were giving a demonstration of their sport.

"It's a lot of work, and your navigators are very, very important," Martin said, nodding toward the youthful Krak, who didn't have the same comfortable-looking ride as he did.

It's her job while riding on the carriage, he explained, "to make sure she distributes her weight in the right place at the right time, to make sure the carriage doesn't tip over.

"And that's important!"

Martin and his wife, Karen, are both carriage drivers, and Krak, a student at Lancaster's Harrisburg Area Community College campus, also works for the family-owned auctioneer firm.

"I had never done anything like this before I practiced for the first time, last year," Krak said between exhibition runs on Tuesday.

An equestrian rider since she was 10, Krak said she's glad "to find a job where I'm lucky enough to work with animals."

Martin "is fun to navigate for … he goes really fast, and is a very good horseman," she added.

Both of the trial runs are about a minute long, with Linus and Amigo, guided by the two humans, leading the carriage around a series of obstacles on the arena floor's dirt surface.

Since the 18-year-old Linus and the 14-year-old Amigo, geldings that Martin bought and imported from Germany in 2003, are performance athletes, "you want to spend a lot of time working with them, so you don't pull muscles or otherwise cause them to break down," the driver said.

In a normal year, the team, which has no official name, takes part in up to 10 competitions. Martin boards the horses on his small farm in the New Holland area.

During this week's two days of exhibition races inside the Farm Show's large arena, Martin raced along with drivers from other parts of Pennsylvania and the eastern U.S.

He said he enjoys "competing and showing with the ponies in different driving disciplines," while also "sharing the sport of driving with others," and hopefully encouraging young drivers in the sport.

Martin, who has more than 20 years of driving experience, has been racing in the carriage exhibition at the Farm Show since it started in 2005.

Martin is well-recognized in the sport of carriage racing, the sport's leaders say.

He and his wife have been invited to the Devon Horse Show, winning his division for six years in a row, along with other major equestrian events, and he also was an alternate on the U.S. Equestrian Team for world championships in 2003 and 2005.

The horses are strong animals, and also very smart, Martin said.

Linus and Amigo "know, just by the way that we drive them and prepare them" what kind of show's coming, he said.

"When we got here" at the Farm Show, he added, "their heads were up, and they were excited.

"They knew they were back here again, where they had raced before. They're very intelligent animals."

doconnor@lnpnews.com