After the absolute garbage dished up last weekend its pleasing to see some races to get excited about this weekend. Might touch on last week first of all though and what the heck were Victoria thinking putting on $5000 country front races on both Friday and Saturday nights and then racing for $2000 Sunday night. Punters across the country expect to see a premier meeting at Melton on a Friday night but yet they were dished up races worth $5K at the so called "home of harness racing".
Surely things aren't going that badly in Victoria??? Then again, actually maybe they are as to put things into a bit of perspective, country front races in Tasmania of all places are worth $7500.
It all comes down to the glut of races which just dilutes the wealth and the quality, they have far too many races which is obvious to anybody and it all comes down to their affiliation with TabCorp in my opinion who want them to provide a product and not worry about the quality as all they care about is turnover and not building the image. They need to remember that just because you build a quality facility like Melton, it doesn't mean you will automatically get increased support unless you provide a certain quality. I can't recall Fitzroy packing too many into the MCG during their history and sadly Harness Racing may well go the same way as Fitzroy unless this gets addressed.
Don't worry, at the end of the financial year they will trot out something about how they provide the greatest return to owners with with total prizemoney over the year but they are kidding themselves if they believe that. It costs an average of $1800 per month to train a horse and if you race for $3300 first prizemoney like Friday night then its little wonder many turn to some "creative ways" to earn a living from the caper. Read into the use of the word "creative" in any manner you wish.
On a more positive note, this week has some top notch racing led by the Be Good Johnny Sprint at Albion Park on Saturday night featuring Blacks A Fake, Mr Feelgood, Washakie, Lonestar Legend, Karloo Mick and the old boy himself in Be Good Johnny. Just a cracker of a race. Even Melton steps up to the plate this Friday with the Group 3 Trotters Cup featuring Sundons Gift taking on some very handy ones and a good mares race headlined by Make Mine Cullen. There is also a very interesting meeting at Globe Derby on Saturday night featuring some real up and comers like Renaissance Man and Roman Ruler, also an interesting kiwi having first start for the Tonkin stable in Our Mick Ison who has raced against some very good ones back in NZ.
The reason I fell in love with Harness Racing was because races like these were regular occurrences but sadly they are few and far between nowadays. We need more FFA races programmed to enable people to watch horses they have an affiliation with, WA have it right with Has The Answers now being a crowd favourite after racing 48 times (from memory) last season despite having a high metro assessment at the start of the season. I sincerely doubt that Victoria or NSW would run 48 races combined that he would have been eligible to race in and that is just absurd.
