Since their inauguration, Victoria’s incredibly innovative and wildly valuable Vicbred Platinum Home Grown Classic contests have sometimes struggled to fill their native brief.

Global pandemics, you see, have a nasty habit of creating chaos on myriad fronts; and the switch of seasons initiated by Harness Racing Australia during said pandemic also played its role. 

When French psychologist Alfred Binet invented the now ubiquitous IQ test, one of his chief measures of intellect has always been patter recognition.

This will take some doing, but, if you’re willing, imagine a world where harness racing had some agency over its own race times and schedule.

In almost every respect, Australasian harness racing treads a myriad of balancing acts regarding any number of subjects.

On their path to stardom all athletic heroes must pass traditional tests, not unlike, for those who love their Greek mythology, the 12 labours of Hercules. 

Three weeks ago, savagely spruiked four-year-old entire District Attorney passed such a challenge. 

The growing preponderance of preferential barrier draws on Victorian metro meetings since the National Ratings system was introduced harbours interesting origins.

IT'S often said that home is where the heart is, but sometimes, as was the case at Mildura Saturday night, home can also be the premises you protect and where you execute maximum damage. 

Many aspects of harness racing’s nature and narrative separate it, particularly in comparison to thoroughbred racing, it’s obvious next of kin.

If you haven’t been watching closely, here’s a newsflash.

Ridiculous as it sounds, Victoria’s benchmark conditioners, Emma Stewart and Clayton Tonkin, have symbolised sleeping giants in recent weeks when it comes to their native habitat.

Sporting lovers, by their very nature, relish the romance of athletic resurrections.

We all adore the headline acts from the sports which we follow, but there's something about comeback kings that set our hearts totally aflutter.

Few losses have hit Australian harness racing’s terrifically tight knit community quite like those they experienced when legendary father/son duo Graeme and Gavin Lang rattled off this mortal coil in rapid succession almost three years ago.

Fortunately, however, there’s another Hall of Fame member of the Lang dynasty that continues to astound.

For decades, Chris Lang has led the way for squaregaiting zealots as they persistently paved their path toward respect and relevance in this part of the world.

No other racing code, scratch that, no other sport is organically partitioned quite like harness racing. 

Well, southern hemisphere harness racing at the very least.

Long before T20 Cricket, Fast4 Tennis and Nitro Athletics, Victorian harness racing tested tradition by launching its own fast and furious format based on six-furlong dashes where speed was all that counted. 

Few that harbour serious commitment and passion to southern hemisphere harness racing would argue that the forces of evolution and revolution have reframed the game in recent years. 

Once, burgeoning stars were forced to finish their apprenticeships before featuring in Group 1 Grand Circuit races like the Hunter Cup, Miracle Mile or New Zealand Cup. 

Harness Racing Victoria’s international ambitions have sometimes outweighed their capacity, but as legendary entrepreneur Richard Branson once opined if you ‘reach higher than you expect, you could reach higher than you ever dreamed’.

These days, post-modern punters – that’s a less pejorative way of saying young and naïve – treat data like a deity. 

Why wouldn’t they?

Theoretically, night one of Victorian harness racing’s TAB Summer of Glory carnival on Saturday night at Ballarat was very much intended to symbolise the opening rounds of a boxing bout. 

Punches would be thrown and techniques assessed without enormous bloodshed in the grander scheme.