The town of Galliera Veneta sits nestled at a northern midpoint between Verona and Venice in the Italian province of Padua. The town is home to 7,000 people with just a single highway – the Viale Europa – dividing the southern neighborhoods and the northern neighborhoods. Everyone seems to know one another and live urban lives while surrounded by acres of farmland and open field. Galliera Veneta is also cradled between two racetracks. Fire up the Viale Europa and then exit onto the Viale della Repubblica and you’ll arrive at the Ippodromo Sant’Artemio Treviso. Head west and then south on the Strada Statale 47 to get to Padua, home to the Ippodromo V.S. Breda in the northeast border of the city. These harness tracks in Italy are no different to many in North America. Maybe the way they race on the tracks is different and the style of equipment, but the racetracks on each side of the pond face the same attendance and interest issues that have plagued the sport of Standardbred racing pretty much since the dawn of the digital age. Crowds will show for big races at Italian tracks, the same way droves flock to The Meadowlands on Hambletonian Day or to Woodbine Mohawk Park for the North America Cup. But many of these coliseums are shells on days where the regular horses go their regular races for checks that mostly pay the bills. Despite the legacy of trotting in Italy – the birthplace of superstar Varenne, after all – interest or awareness of the sport has dwindled. Even watching Italian racing, which has recently become available to the North American betting public (at least for me through Xpressbet), the everyday events draw a handful of people, and handle from the American audience is near nonexistent. Such conditions frustrated a man who recently contacted the DRF Harness Editor Derick Giwner. The man also had an idea – an idea well in motion – that he thinks can help spark people to have an interest in harness racing. His name is Filippo Lago and he lives in Galliera Veneta. For Lago, Standardbreds have been a part of his family back to his paternal grandfather, who had a trotting horse merely because – by my guess – the motor vehicle had yet been invented. About 40 years ago, Lago’s father then acquired a small farm that has stayed with the family as a passion project. Filippo is an extension of that passion. He not only works on the stud farm and has a focus on breeding horses, but he’s also a horse racing writer ranging from websites to the magazine “Il Trottatore”, which is the Italian breeding industry’s staple publication. Lago also told me he once interviewed Italian singer Andrea Bocelli, who loves horses and also recently said something about the Kardashians? Artists! ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter And so Lago, a lover of harness racing, devised an idea. The inspiration came the Saturday night before the Prix d’Amerique (I’m not going to explain how important this race is, most Americans should know it. It’s the Race for America, after all). Lago, who told me his nighttime routine includes listening to music to fall asleep, encountered a post that he said “documented the atmosphere of Paris” (he wrote to me through an English translator, by the way) and that he “was particularly struck by the fans who supported Idao De Tillard”. That horse, Idao De Tillard, entered this year’s Prix d’Amerique as the favorite based in part on a potential storybook moment for Thierry Duvaldestin, who he claimed was the best horse he’s trained since Prix d’Amerique winner Ready Cash. He went off the favorite in the race, but broke stride immediately to disappoint the many euros backed on him to win. “I wondered to myself,” Lago said, “why in Italy, despite having important men and horses, as well as a great horse racing tradition, it was not possible to set up something so engaging? I thought about it. And I actually thought about it.” He calls his endeavor the “Gougeon Project”, named for a horse he bred named Gougeon. Instead of doing what many breeders do, which is either sell their yearling at auction, through private sale or simply race it themselves, Lago created a cheap offering: 100 shares. He opened the sale of this horse to everyone in his town of Galliera Veneta, selling each for just €80. He also told me that all 100 shares have been sold. “There was great interest from my fellow villagers,” Lago said. “Surely the winning idea was to attribute a rather low value to each share. If we want to bring as many people as possible to the racing world, as is the mission of this project, it is important to keep the cost low.” Gougeon is sired by Oropuro Bar, a son of Love You and an earner of over €500,000. His dam is Appia, a daughter of Varenne and the broodmare Giberna Del Rio. Lago told me that bloodline means Gougeon’s maternal grandmother is a sister to champion mare Lana Del Rio, a winner of 18 races from 47 starts including a victory in the 2008 Italian Trotting Derby. Lago could not give an exact number for how many people own a portion of Gougeon, since he said some people purchased multiple shares. But a few weeks ago Lago went to visit the yearling – foaled in May of 2022 – at a stable in Pontoglio, and many of the owners stood and took picture after picture with the young horse. Lago also noted that the calm his yearling exhibited when surrounded by all his owners shows he could be a smart one. The owners of Gougeon, however many there are in that town of Galliera Veneta, still have a ways to go before they get to the races. Lago said he has Lorenzo Baldi, a multiple classic-winning trainer in Italy, ready to condition Gougeon for the races. Right now, Lago has sold those owners a dream. And with time that dream can manifest into success on the track, or kindle an interest in harness racing, or even just bring together people in the small northeast town of Galliera Veneta, where pretty much everyone knows everybody.