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Thread: IDEAS on how we can improve Harness Racing

  1. #71
    Member Yearling JanellePeter will become famous soon enough JanellePeter's Avatar
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    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.

  2. #72
    Senior Member Horse Of The Year Greg Hando will become famous soon enough
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    JanellePeter where would you have the tracks located for the NSW harness hub and which tracks have straights of less than 100 mts ?
    Have whoever you want on but don't ever have yourself on

  3. #73
    Super Moderator Stallion Messenger will become famous soon enough Messenger's Avatar
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    Interesting thoughts Janelle and Peter

    I have only ever bet on pacers so I should support your pacing only idea but I cannot bring myself to. You would be aware that Trotters is all they have in Europe and Victoria have gone down the trotting road to cash in on French coverage of our races. Trotting is as big as Racing in France while in the USA where they have mostly pacing - they are struggling like us.

    I could support your starting formation idea as a form of handicapping (which the death of stand start racing has made difficult) but not because you want to know how the horses will settle in all races - next you will want to know what order they will cross the line in

    There is hardly a track in Victoria that does not have a straight of at least 185m (Warragul is an exception). IMO we still need attendees as TV/App viewers only are unlikely to buy horses and without them we have no racing. Even though every state has half their population in the metro areas if you restrict your racing to those areas only you are semi-ignoring the other half of the population - the rural 'horsey' people. Country racing is the lifeblood of gallops racing and harness

    Just my thoughts and I look forward to more from you guys
    per un PUGNO di DOLLARI

  4. #74
    Member Yearling JanellePeter will become famous soon enough JanellePeter's Avatar
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    Thanks for the replies.

    Tracks with straights < 100m are Broken Hill, Burnie and Scottsdale - Not used too often thank goodness but it should have been more a general statement. Straights < 150m are bad enough and there are plenty of them. We like races where the better horse can win. Not just the horse in the better position.

    We are not as familiar with Victoria's tracks. Only know Melton and Ballarat and these are good tracks. We spend a lot of time thinking about how to give each horse the best chance to win. Even having lanes in the home straight crossed our mind. The leader would need to fan 3 wide at the final bend opening up 2 lanes to the inside. Would need to have a lane line on the ground that could spook a horse.

    We both grew up in the country. The smaller time horses trainers would have to decide if there horse was good enough to complete otherwise that would be left to the show races. We like it when they put trots on at the local shows. No idea where to create a hub. Currently in NSW we prefer Bathurst, Newcastle, Goulburn tracks. We don't like Menangle that much as a betting track.

    We also like having some pace in the races so you don't get 70% leaders winning. Technology could have this with red lights around the track if the leaders are going too slow. Need the handicappers to determine the required quarters or speed. 3 red lights and the driver gets fined and horse put outside mobile draw in next start or banned from leading future races (Or some real penalty).

  5. #75
    Super Moderator Stallion Messenger will become famous soon enough Messenger's Avatar
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    I'm afraid that most of my knowledge is Vic based guys and the only regularly used track in Vic with a straight < 183m are Echuca = 164 and Warragul = 147

    Most tracks (except Ballarat) have a sprint lane that allows 2 horses to go inside the leader so that is pretty much the equivalent of your leader having to fan 3 wide

    In Victoria the drivers are required to run the first 800m of the last mile in < 65 secs or they are fined but with the improvement in times on most tracks this is fairly leisurely nowadays
    per un PUGNO di DOLLARI

  6. #76
    Senior Member Horse Of The Year Dot will become famous soon enough
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    Quote Originally Posted by JanellePeter View Post
    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.

  7. #77
    Senior Member Horse Of The Year gutwagon will become famous soon enough gutwagon's Avatar
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    Janellepeter, ideas 1 & 2 would just lead to odds on favs in every race and most of them winning. Victoria has too many trotters to just scrap them, it's up to punters to know who will gallop and this increases value in the payouts.
    Idea 3 is ok except I would scrap the sprint lanes. Victoria has improved the camber on most of its tracks and extended as many as possible. Forcing horses to run at minimum speeds just takes tactics out of racing. Most horses come from the country areas and every area deserves a track. You basically want to know who is going to win every race before it even starts !

    I would bring back standing starts, have no minimum first half times and no sprint lanes and at least one 1400m track in Vic.
    Don't die wondering !

  8. #78
    Member Yearling JanellePeter will become famous soon enough JanellePeter's Avatar
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    Thanks for the input. Good discussion and it does help us understand a few things.
    Love to see option 2 given a go as a handicapping mechanism.
    If Trots are here to stay then someone needs to figure how to improve the horses breaking gait.

  9. #79
    Member Yearling JanellePeter will become famous soon enough JanellePeter's Avatar
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    Forgot to mention we would really like to see drone footage in races. We have a son right into these. They self stabilise and can easily travel at the speed of a pacer.
    We've seen footage at speed and it looks cool. You can set a predetermined flight path and adjust speed to suit race during the race.
    Footage from about 20m ahead of the field looking back at them from about 15m up would be great. Stewards might find it interesting to view as well.

  10. #80
    Super Moderator Stallion Messenger will become famous soon enough Messenger's Avatar
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    As long as the horses aren't spooked, I reckon that would be great too J&P - I think the gallops use it a fair bit (Ch7) especially for the start of races and it really shows you what is going on better than any other camera angle - I think there positioning is however somewhat of an overhead rear-view which would eliminate spooking the horses
    per un PUGNO di DOLLARI

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