Interesting that you should say that David because Ray summarized the report he wrote this month as follows
A once great vibrant harness racing industry now finds itself in terminal decline with the hopes and dreams of many younger participants never to
materialise
All because of incompetent management which still prevails today, the greed of those that cheat to gain advantage and some of the larger studs who gained benefit from unlimited books to the demise of the smaller studs
Australian harness racing executives followed a flawed North American model which has seen a massive decline in public interest followed by a corresponding decline in industry participation
Had any of Australia’s top brass had the intelligence to study the North American model they would have quickly discovered that an industry model subsidized by huge poker machine incomes or massive government grants could not be replicated in Australia
There is now little left that Australian participants can do other than to try and slow down the ultimate demise of a professional sporting industry into an expensive “hobby” pastime
To do this means that in Donald Trump terms the participants must call for the draining of the swamp
The only way to achieve this is for concerned participants to create on–line petitions in their home States to call on Governments for a full review into the Governance of their sport with the objective of establishing a proven professional management regime model to strategically reposition the harness racing brand to meet the needs and wants of the public at large
Anything less will see harness racing as we now know it disappear within the next decade and the gap filled by thoroughbred and greyhound racing