Harness: The sport has a need for speed

“I’ve got the need, the need . . . for speed.”

It would be difficult to find a slogan more befitting the sport of harness racing and further proof of this was evident if you were at The Meadowlands on Saturday (7/14) evening.

Harness racing has become obsessed with speed, more accurately, with the final times of races. It is to the point where world records are losing their luster. Sure, not the all-age world records, but there are so many sub-categories of world records that quite frankly, I can’t keep up.

When I was a race caller, there were times where the horse that I just called winning set a world record and I had no idea because I didn’t think to look up what the world record was for a 4-year-old gelding on a five-eighths mile track. It floored me to find out that world record was different than the world record for a 4-year-old horse on a five-eighths mile track. Not to mention, do we really need to designate world records for 4-year-olds and separate them from aged horses?

The 7/14 card from a speed standpoint was incredible. A 3-year-old colt trotted the fastest mile ever by a sophomore on a mile track only to see a 3-year-old filly trot a sub-1:50 mile later in the evening. A couple weeks before, a condition trot at The Meadowlands was contested in 1:50 2/5.

I know that the breed has gotten faster, bikes have gotten lighter and sleeker and drivers are more athletic, but where is all this speed coming from and why do we care so much?

Further proof of how much we swoon over speed is Atlanta’s breathtaking performances at Vernon Downs and Tioga Downs. Those efforts and their final time had several sharp harness racing minds on Twitter exclaiming that she is the prohibitive Hambletonian favorite. The rationale being that no horse was coming close to her speed. Fast forward a month and Six Pack and Plunge Blue Chip (who Atlanta defeated soundly) have now put up faster miles than her. But what does that all mean?

The real irony to me is that in a sport that is so obsessed with speed and times, harness racing still records its fractions and miles in fifths of a second, as if it were 1975. The sport is so head over heels in love with speed and world records, yet there could be four horses that hold a record of 1:47 flat, and harness racing doesn’t care to separate the four by using hundredths of a second. After all, one horse could have completed his or her mile in 1:47.02 and the other in 1:47.18, which are hardly the same but are still recorded the same in the record books.

Imagine if thoroughbred racing had a track record or a world record for each sex and different age groups at different distances? People’s heads would spin. There is a dirt world record at 12 furlongs, its 2:24 and it belongs to Secretariat. Nobody knows the fastest 12 furlong dirt race for a 4YO or older horses or filly or mare, nor does anyone care. Yet thoroughbred racing has adopted timing their races in hundredths of a second while harness racing remains in the past.

This isn’t a new fad, by the way. Cambest’s 1:46 1/5 time trial was 25 years ago. It was 12 years ago that Devonshire Hanover put up the then unheard-of fractions of 25 2/5, 51 2/5 and 1:19 that sent the harness racing industry into a frenzy. Then races became more about setting world records than actually winning the race. I remember when Somebeachsomewhere went to the Red Mile, whether or not he would break the world record was all anyone could talk about. In 2012, the week leading up to New Jersey Classic, everyone was talking about if Hurrikane Kingcole could break the world record. Even his trainer was talking about it. It is probably fair to say that all of those conversations got in the head of Yannick Gingras, who drove the horse looking for a world record and the horse ended up being defeated by Panther Hanover.

It’s clear that the standardbred breed is only getting faster; probably 12 to 15 seconds faster over the last 50 years. That’s not to say that in 50 years a standardbred will be faster than a thoroughbred, as these horses can only get so fast and technology can only get so good. But if harness racing is going to remain this obsessed with speed and times, then the time has come to adopt a change in how we time these races. Make the move to using hundredths of a second and create a more accurate record book for the sport’s fastest horses, especially if we are going to continue to break world records down by track size, sex and age.