When spring has sprung in Melbourne, all of racing’s sins are set aside for two short months.
It’s a little like that moment you open the door for guests after bickering with your partner, smiling like the world could hardly be more wondrous.
Differences are deferred, politics placated, and presentation prioritised.
As in life, however, problems don’t evaporate, instead they’re prone to fester.
And racing’s biggest issue is its painfully insular outlook.
Last night, at Bendigo, the Breeders Crown series begun with heats for three-year-old pacers of both genders.
Last week, at Menangle, New South Wales staged finals of their Breeders Challenge series for – you guessed it – three-year-old, and two-year-old, pacers of both genders.
Traditionally, standardbreds have been deified for their amazing durability.
But times have changed, and this just doesn’t work.
For years, harness racing powerbrokers whispered quietly about re-positioning their feature events across the warmer months.
And for years, nobody moved an inch; then everyone went at once.
Even Harness Racing New Zealand has waged a surreptitious war with the re-formatting of its feature calendar.
There’s nothing new about this, of course.
One day after this year’s Melbourne Cup, New South Wales announced an exponential prizemoney increase for the Golden Slipper.
This follows an aggressive spring invasion and wild proliferation of pop-up features.
Because of the bubble in which it operates, racing sees racing as it’s natural enemy.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Racing’s natural enemy is sport.
Once, the battle between racing and sport – other sport - related solely to relevance.
Now, however, the skirmish is being staged on racing’s home turf: wagering.
Every investment on who scores the first goal of an AFL match, or who wins Wimbledon, is money lost to racing across its triumvirate of codes.
Racing has been very fortunate through Australia’s pandemic crisis, and all administrations have delivered brilliantly since early last year by turning crisis into opportunity.
But if all jurisdictions, of all codes, don’t recognize that power lies in unity, the fruits of recent labour will not ripen as they should.
If recent weeks have reminded us of anything, it’s that the soul of Aussie harness racing dwells in regional venues.
Sadly, for St Arnaud, their Cup meeting will be held at Tabcorp Park Melton tonight, as has become the norm, but at its very core this is a country card.
And the field assembled to tackle this year’s St Arnaud Pacing Cup speaks volumes for Victoria’s vaunted depth of talent.
There will be those, quite rightly, that say the sport lacks superstar power at present.
But retaining quality horses like Our Millionaire, Silent Major and Supreme Dominator, who’ll all contest this evening’s feature event, is arguably more important.
The opinions expressed in The Forum are those of the author and may not be attributed to or represent policies of Harness Racing Victoria, which is the state authority and owner of thetrots.com.au.