What Racing's All About

Published: August 26, 2015 12:41 pm EDT

Most of us on a cloudy day can easily picture our lives with no harness racing. As our industry shrinks, and our investors look for exits, our faith sometimes becomes shaky.

I often look up at the stands at some race cards and wonder if anyone really watches or cares about racing anymore?

Can we really grow our fan base? and if so....how?

If you think no one cares, or racing is "dead", you may want to take a trip to Prince Edward island in the third week of August and you will witness a spectacle that is shocking.

FANS....actual race fans, in the flesh at the half-mile oval. People who love horses; people who love racing them; and lots that love watching them.

I was lucky enough this year to be a part of something you will rarely see, let alone participate in.

If you haven't seen the Gold Cup & Saucer on TV or live then I'm afraid I may not be able to paint a proper picture...The lights, the fans, the thickness in the air, it really is something.

It isn't just the horses, it's the atmosphere. The racing fans in the Maritimes that come out for Old Home Week, and especially the Gold Cup, are a rare breed.

Imagine having the North America Cup or the Meadowlands Pace scheduled to go off at 11:50 p.m. and at 11:40 p.m. you receive one of the most vicious rain storms you could imagine.

Within minutes the track is destroyed and the race simply cannot go on.

If you had 25,000 patrons attending that Saturday night card and decided to hold that one last race the next day at 3:00 p.m., how many people would you expect would show up?

Because that's exactly what happened this year on P.E.I.

I know when I walked up to the fence Sunday at 2:30 p.m. I didn't know what to expect and when I saw the size of the crowd, I was never so proud to be an Islander.

The place was packed. The same electricity from the same fans almost 15 hours after the town virtually flooded.

That's love, and we don't see it very often.

The track crew was top notch and they pulled off the unthinkable. The track was transformed over night from what looked like the remnants of a tractor pull to a lightning fast half-mile track.

When the horses paraded for the only race on that Sunday everyone was on their feet and your heart wasn't beating if the hair on your arms wasn't standing at attention.

That should always be horse racing's "end game". We need people to gamble and bring their friends to the track. We need to grow our customer base and be as interactive as any prospective fan needs us to be. But above all else we should always want people to love this sport.

Not because it's a great way to pass time or because you can drink and watch your money run around in front of you, but because this is a fantastic game and it is woven into the thread of rural towns across North America.

I know Ontario is not P.E.I., but we should surely hope Ontario fans find the love P.E.I. fans have for our industry because without the fans we have nothing.

Congratulations to Red Shores for pulling off a great Old Home Week but from the bottom of my heart I'd like to say thank you to the fans that showed up on Sunday to make the Gold Cup & Saucer the race that it is.

If you haven't been before, you should all try to go to that small little island the third week in August to see what harness racing is really all about.


The views presented in Trot Blogs are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Standardbred Canada.

Have something to say about this? Log in or create an account to post a comment.