Often in this column, we begin by framing the content with an opening quote by a leading historical figure.
Well, here’s one which resides a little closer to him: gate speed is a beautiful thing.
And in the Blacks A Fake Free For All at Melton Park that beautiful thing may be what’s required to re-enliven Victoria’s open class competition.
Too often in recent weeks, and even months, the fast-class contest at Vic harness headquarters hasn’t filled its brief as the fastest race of the evening.
For whatever reason, a walk-and-sprint culture has infected Melton’s highest-quality affairs.
Hopefully, however, that culture will find itself eviscerated in the Blacks A Fake FFA on Saturday evening.
And here’s why.
Firstly, the short course 1720m trip.
Popular wisdom dictates that sprinting events are the least competitive of all; this popular wisdom is wrong.
See, races staged between 2100 and 2400m are much more likely to prove pedestrian in nature.
Largely because gate speed is a beautiful thing which becomes infinitely more wondrous when it’s used to play for keeps.
If Saturday’s FFA were staged over 2240m, early weaponry would likely be employed, as it so often is, to find an early position then tactfully relent that advantage in transit.
Over 1720m, however, attitudes change.
Nothing is set in stone, but one would suspect that four of the inside five runners in the BAF will need to show their hand.
Vanquish Stride is unlikely to have designs on leading yet may be forced to run the gate in hopes of at least holding the horse next door early on.
That horse next door is Yankee Gold, a flying miler with super early pace who also “needs” to charge the arm and may even - although it’s unlikely - hope to hold the top if he gets there.
Those two runners represent the first and second course, but Serg Blanco and Heza Son Of Agun represent the main meal.
Both horses are extremely gifted and have every right to shoot for all-the-way success if one finds the lead before the other.
These ingredients listed above are important – and for many reasons.
All things being equal, the opening stanza of the open class contest should be frenetic, exciting and somewhat unpredictable.
Then, with the early swingers deemed as vulnerable, others will join the fray, then more again.
This should be a contest of colour and action, a symbol of what top class harness racing should look like.
It should be a spectacle – and that spectacle is possible for one reason above all others.
That reason is thus.
Gate speed, when properly employed for all the right reasons, is a beautiful thing.
A marvellously beautiful thing.
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.