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.
Unlike Europe, where trotting – or squaregaiting – possesses exclusive dominion over what harness racing represents, Australia and New Zealand are very different indeed.
Here, harness racing is, quite genuinely, two different disciplines: trotting and also pacing.
Year by year, marginal as its growth may seem, trotting events, particularly in Victoria, are steadily growing with regard to overall percentage of the pie.
And the prestige of those events along with their prizemoney is evolving at a far more frenetic pace.
Despite this evolution, there remains a small cohort of conditioners that dominate Victoria’s squaregaiting landscape.
Without doubt, with his decades of excellence, Chris Lang is and always will be the benchmark to whom all others aspire.
More recently, at the elite level, particularly for older horses, Andy Gath has set standards few others can possibly match.
The stalwarts of squaregaiting across the past decade, at all levels, however, are Anton Golino – with the backing of Yabby Dam Farms – and Brent Lilley (pictured), who always seems front and centre in Australia’s major trotting features.
Tonight, at Melton Park, these two trotting behemoths are both banking on big nights, each presenting an awesome list of combatants at Vic harness headquarters.
Former Kiwi Lilley has Kyvalley Anthony in the Vicbred Platinum Home Grown Classic Final for three-year-old males and Kyvalley Amanda in the alternate Home Grown decider for three-year-old trotting fillies.
He also has potential superstar mare Queen Elida in the Aldebaran Park Sumthingaboutmaori Trotters Free For All at Group 1 level.
Meanwhile, Golino has Im Ready Jet and Electrojet in the Sumthingaboutmaori and the rapidly-emerging Shaunie In the Peter Jackson Menswear Trot.
They are both special horsemen and one suspects they’ll both walk away from this evening’s metropolitan meeting with silverware somewhere in the back seat as they make the trips back to their relative habitats and quickly get set to do it all again.
In recent weeks, Victoria’s open class events have been interesting to say the least.
Just as we saw last year, with so many feature events contested through summer, the months through autumn and winter allowed pacers slightly below the elite standard to ply their trade at free for all level.
The issue at present, and tonight’s Captain Sandy FFA is an ideal example, is that several very, very good horses are simply hanging around.
That is why, in a nutshell, just six horses will contest this evening’s open class event.
Let’s be clear, in its own way, the Captain Sandy is an absolute belter.
The issue is that years and decades of data tell us that despite its evenness and depth, the Captain Sandy simply won’t attract the turnover it would with 10 or more runners engaged.
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.