Is harness racing suffering from mini-strokes?

Since my column on Time Trials, I have gotten everything from very positive comments to downright nasty ones!

That’s OK. Everyone deserves an opinion and, rightfully, they have expressed their thoughts on the issue.

One gentleman said, “No. No. A thousand times no!”

Another very prominent owner and breeder lamented, “I think, for a top horse, it would be interesting to know what a horse can do” on its own.

I spoke to another owner who has a horse with a “(1):49 and a piece record but has been race timed in (1):48 and change” and he’d rather see a TT1:48 on his record rather than just a note on his page that he was race timed in a similar time while finishing several lengths back.

I’ve spoken to top drivers and their voices are split, some saying that the horses are going all they can go while others would like to give the horse an opportunity to show what they really can do under the perfect time trial conditions.

As of this writing, there are 59 horses on a list of the fastest winning pacing performers of the year…which leaves, possibly, 400 or more that finished back of the winner and not able to claim a particular mark.

Yes, there are, literally, hundreds of stars that are performing on our racetracks today—hundreds of unrecognized, un-famous heroes—that a could use a headline or two about their heroics on our racetracks.

That brings me back to the mid-1980’s when I, along with Phil Sporn, were the harness racing editors at Sports Information Data Base, a company that was attempting to put the entire history of sports on the internet.

Sadly, they were a few years ahead of its time.

One of the V.P.’s over there was a baseball historian by the name of Bill Shannon.

Shannon was an encyclopedia himself.

He was the official scorer for the Yankees and Mets for decades and had a perspective on sports and life like no other I have ever met.

He died in a house fire some years back…but, through many, many round table rendezvous, his words live on in my mind.

One day, we were talking racing and baseball, among other things, and we got to talking about tradition in sports.

Bill said that there are traditions in sports that should live forever and baseball has them in the All-Star game and the home run hitting contest the night before that annual grand spectacle.

He asked me about our sport and I replied that we have a Triple Crown for trotters and pacers with The Little Brown Jug and Hambletonian being the headliners.

He interrupted and said, “yes, they might be headliners but I am talking about traditions that do not have any real connection to the sport as far as, like, in ours, who is going to win the pennant or world series. One of ours the home run hitting contest.

“It brings together the best of the best and they put on the show of shows in front of at least 75,000 people with millions more watching on television.”

Yes, the annual Home Run Derby packs the ballpark every single year in an event that shows the best of the best in power and strength and durability.

I then interrupted Bill and defended and retorted our sport with, “Well, we have time-trials where some of the stars and future stars appear to show off their speed and heart.

“When Niatross time-trialled in 1980, the roar of the crowd that day was unmistakable and probably heard in Frankfort, 25 miles away.”

Of course, harness racing has let the tradition of time trials fade away…just like the renaming of the Nat Ray trot and a few others “as time goes by.”

When the sales catalogs come out, whose entry wouldn’t want to be in the “Sweet 16” or “Elite 8” or “Final 4?”

When the sales catalogs come out, wouldn’t rather have TT1:48 then “race timed in 1:48?

Every time a racetrack closes, every time a stakes is renamed, every time a horse is denied even a chance to be on an elite list of the most powerful, the strongest and the fastest serves as a mini-stroke for the sport, snipping vessels supplying the very blood, sweat and tears that have made our sport so unique and great.

Even one single day of Time Trials featuring, say, 40 or 50 of the greatest pacers and trotters in training would suffice—those with a mark of 1:49 but “race timed” in 1:48 would be candidates…and The Red Mile stands would be packed.

This sport is about owners, trainers, drivers, breeders, farms and FANS.

Our rich history is melting away…and we are doing little about it!

And while we are at it, we need our own cable television network—one that devotes 100% of the time to standardbred racing.

We cannot rely on “horse racing” networks that are continually putting harness racing on the back burner.

We have all kinds of talent bursting at the seams with knowledge—from the inception of our sport to this very day—and we need an outlet that puts US on the front burner.

By US, I don’t mean just the United States.

Harnesslink covers the world of harness racing and it’s time we get 24 hour-a-day coverage encompassing US and Canada and New Zealand and Australia and Europe and wherever else there is harness racing.

You know, I was discussing this with a longtime participant in the industry and he asked, “You are pushing 80, my friend, why do you even care?

I have cared since August 22, 1959, which was my first “real” visit to a track, and witnessed thousands of things that make me care—from bringing our sport to rehabilitation facilities and nursing homes to malls and other shopping centers.

One miracle that harness racing performed occurred when a wheelchair bound woman who couldn’t speak won a (filmed) race and, when I asked her how she did it, she struggled and said, “I tried hard!”

That one moment—that single miracle—not only left doctors and nurses left speechless, but wound up on a CBS special segment entitled “Someone You Should Know!”

Very ironic that two minutes before showing the film, the women couldn’t talk and the doctors and nurses, of course, could…and, after the race, the women spoke for the first time in six months and the doctors and nurses were left “speechless!”

Need anything more be said?

by John Berry, for Harnesslink