Trots devotees can now revel in an outstanding collection of great harness racing moments and the memorabilia that spawned from them with the release of an extraordinary online collection.
The Victorian Harness Racing Heritage Collection at Bendigo’s Lord’s Raceway now hosts an extraordinary 477 items on the Victorians Collections website.
The stunning collection features prized silks, caps, documents, racing photos, trophies, rugs, booklets and sulkies among an ever-growing array of memorabilia captured in high quality.
The collection is the result of a Victorian Government grant that pared a Victorian Collections’ expert with six volunteers, who across three days at Lords Raceway compiled the material, much of which is on show at Bendigo Harness Racing Club.
“It’s way, way beyond any expectations,” volunteer Noel Ridge said. “Harness racing in Victorian now has an online museum.
“One of the features, in addition to the colours and trophies, is that Steve Sparks 30 years ago started compiling records of some of the really good horses on his typewriter. They were scanned in, so horses like Amorous and even Adaptor, they are probably the first accurate career records of some of the great horses.”