Hi
We are new to the forum but have analysed and punted on harness racing for some time. We have been looking for somewhere to share the ideas on how to improve harness racing. Note these ideas come from a punters perspective:
1. Do away with Standing starts and Trot gait racing. We have many stats and rarely bother betting in these races due to the high percentage of breaks. I am sure we can all appreciate the frustration of watching a race only to see your horse rare at the start or not even make the start. Breaks in MS pacers are around 5% compared to over 35% in SS Trotts. It turns people off. It also makes it a lot easier to analyse races if you restrict it to pacers only.
2. Try some races without the mobile gates and get them to start in rail and 1 wide formation to start the race. It is very frustrating spending time figuring out who should lead a race only to see a completely different configuration once the gate moves away. Let's try starting the race with No1 leading, No2 outside leader, No 3 behind leader, No 4 1 out 1 back etc. At least you know the order of racing, horses shouldn't get unluckily trapped wide which happens in 90% of all races. The races end up in a formation so why not try starting in formation.
3. Tracks need consideration. Unlike gallops horses on some tracks can't win from anywhere. We should limit the number of tracks used and spend money to have them setup properly. Hobart is one of our favoured tracks. It contains a sprint lane (this is a must for fair racing in our opinion), The super-evaluation or chamfer on the bends is good which improves speed around the bends and uses less energy when horses need to go wide, and it has a long straight giving horses a chance to find a running line and compete. Tracks with home straights less than 100m are terrible. Add in no sprint lane and you see a very high percent of leaders winning. Its a race to the first corner. As we have read on this forum the attendance at tracks is never going to go up because people can view everything from their lounge room. We would love to see only 5 tracks in NSW within a fairly close proximity to each other. We can only imagine how much travel the horses and drivers etc have to do each week to get around to every different tracks. This could create a Harness Racing Hub for NSW.

Sorry if we are covering old ground.