Inter Dominion; what is it lacking?

It is time to give harness racing’s Inter Dominion some tough love.

This year’s series is just weeks away and us diehards cannot wait. The racing will be spirited, the stories will flow and the history of the sport’s most iconic event will carry it a long way.

But, and this is a big but, will it get a much broader cut-through?

Last week’s “withdrawal” of WA’s best pacer Magnificent Storm really got me thinking. It was the latest big blow to the once great event.

Just a week earlier, stunning Pryde’s EasiFeed Victoria Cup winner – and arguably Australia’s most exciting pacer – Rock N Roll Doo was ruled-out of the Inter Dominion by his trainer-driver Mick Stanley.

The week before that, NZ’s best pacer Self Assured wasn’t even nominated for the Inter Dominion. Remember, he is owned by a Victorian (Jean Feiss), too.

During all that, reigning NZ Cup hero Copy That was also declared a “non-runner” by his owner Merv Butterworth.

Even being conservative, that’s four of the top six or eight horses in this part of the world already missing from the Inter Dominion pacing series.

That’s disappointing and unthinkable in years gone by.

It simply cannot continue.

Before we talk about possible solutions, why is this happening?

The prize money or lack of it is one of the main reasons. The $500,000 total purse is simply nowhere near enough for the sport’s biggest brand and most historic race.

It looks even worse when you’ve got a $2.1 million TAB Eureka, $1 million Miracle Mile and now a slightly weird $1 million WA slot race.

Then there is the format.

There was justifiably uproar a few years back when HRNSW – then led by Sam Nati – radically overhauled the format.

History shows it was a miss and a bridge too far at the time, but the general idea was right.

As much as the Inter Dominion was built on its gruelling nature – three compulsory heats and a final in a fortnight – that’s now pushing more people away than it’s worth.

The connections of Rock N Roll Doo, Magnificent Storm and Copy That all strongly sighted the format as major deterrents from contesting the Inter Dominion.

The timeslot, intertwined with the format, makes things even worse.

As champion horseman and Inter Dominion-lover Anthony Butt has been howling for years now, we simply cannot continue with the four runs in a fortnight schedule if we’re going to persist with a late November/early December timeslot.

“Maybe, and only maybe, you could get away with it at the end of the feature race season when the horses get to have a spell after it, but it’s never going to work and get all the best horses when it’s run so early in the season,” Butt said.

He is right. 100 per cent right.

Think about what follows this year’s SENTrack Inter Dominion in Victoria.

Just to mention the mega races, you’ve got the Hunter Cup, Fremantle/WA Pacing Cup double, Miracle Mile and NZ has its slot race “The Race” and the Auckland Cup.

“We’ve improved the breed so much, but we’ve also refined it,” Copy That’s trainer Ray Green said. “These modern day horses, at least most of them, aren’t bred to go four races in two weeks … especially not when they’ve then got a lot of big races in the months after it.”

So, what is the solution?

There is no easy fix, but we need to get the smartest minds together to save the Inter Dominion, which is on the nose and rapidly being overtaken by other big races.

Why? Because it is and always should be the single greatest brand harness racing has. It is our Melbourne Cup.

What are some of the options to consider?

• Changing the dates? I’m not sure if this is possible with the current crammed summer calendar, but it must be fully explored.
• Changing the format? As much as I (and many traditionalists) love the three heats into a final, it’s hard to justify now. We have to listen to the horsemen. At least a scale-back to two heats and a final seems logical.
• Increasing prize money? Yes, yes, yes, but how? Where does it come from? This is a much broader discussion, but essentially nobody “owns” the Inter Dominion. States are more focused on building their own major races, which they get to run and promote every year, not a race they get occasionally on the rotational system.
• Consider running it at one fixed venue? Yes, this has to be assessed. I’ve always felt Queensland would make an ideal home to make it a destination event. When Queensland harness moves to its new home (in the next couple of years with the pending closure of Albion Park), maybe we consider giving it three years of hosting as a trial? That’s if Racing Queensland and the host club is willing to get right behind it.

The Inter Dominion is one of the first things that drew me into this great game.

In my travels, I still bump into many people who want to chat about their Inter Dominion memories.

Let’s keep making those memories.

It’s going to take some courage, a willingness to embrace change and some much-needed uniformity between states and clubs.

But it needs to happen.

by Adam Hamilton, for HRV