IDEAS on how we can improve Harness Racing

[JanellePeter]

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.

[Dot]

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.

Welcome J&P. I know you have prefaced your remarks as from the view of the punter, however the industry is so much more then just punting. As Kev has said the trotter is the growth sector of the industry. Doing away with the trotter ( and by default the vast majority of standing starts) would see something I imagine now in the order of 25% of the value of the industry and reduce its net worth in Vic at least by around $100m. Some of this maybe reinvested in pacers but I expect the majority would be lost to the industry, and whilst there may be an increase on turnover on pacing races the end result would be an overall reduction in turnover as a result of fewer races.

Trotting races do turn over less then pacing races, however at the lower levels trot races frequently have a higher number of starters, and at the elite level races have lower prizemoney then pacing races so trots ( as opposed to pacing participants) whilst generating lesser returns are also receiving less in return.

Gallops punters don't appear to struggle to analyse the form between sprint, middle distance, and staying ( and occasionally jumps) races which actually have a number of runners participating through more then one category whilst trotters rarely compete against pacers so I don't see how doing away with trotters makes analysing pacing races easier. To take that concept to the extreme, should we be racing pacers only on identical tracks at exactly the same distance to make it easier to analyse?

As for point 2 I actually suggested that ( but using the mobile gate) to David Martin some 18months ago, as an alternative handicapping method to standing starts given the reducing horse population meant increasing disparity in the abilities of the horses in a field. Whilst not suggesting replacing the conventional mobile start for all races, this form of start does offer better handicapping opportunities and negates gatespeed if the field is accelerated to race speed before the gate pulls away which may in turn lead to more "blanket" finishes. Only way to know is to trial it, and that's certainly a lot easier then building a mile straight track ( as suggested elsewhere ) and trialing that!!

Whilst not contained in a single hub it does appear that NSW is evolving towards a limited number of tracks, distance and travel is a consideration, and whilst times are a changing historically a reduction in the number of tracks has always resulted in a corresponding decline in the number of participants and horses.