Welsh Harness Racing

[Pompete]

Living in the West Country I can pick up SC4 on the telly and every Monday night they have Welsh Harness Racing on – and it seems to be well organised and well supported.

Clearly, because they speak funny I haven’t got a clue what’s going on. I have been Harness Racing in Cagnes-sur-mer and quite enjoyed it so wouldn’t mind finding out a bit more about this Welsh racing.

Does anybody know anything about it or go along?

Thanks

[deltaman]

http://www.welsh-trotting.co.uk/tracks
There’s few American trainers that come along if the money is right.

edit..sorry wrong link type into google and hope.

[Irish Stamp]

Tir Prince (Colwyn Bay’s track) is the Newmarket of Harness Racing. Other than to tell you that Cagnes-Sur-Mer is near Nice Airport and that British harness racing is about as straight as Snake Pass I can’t really tell you more than that i’m afraid

[Venusian]

I’m afraid British harness racing is about on a par with flapping.

Not a patch on, not within a million miles of, what it’s like in Europe, for instance.

Goodness knows why they’ve adopted the mind-numbingly dull American model as the basis for the sport here.

[Neil Watson]

RUK showed a few races a while back at Musselburgh and it was very entertaining.

Darren Owen does commentaries at Tir Prince during the season aswell as his regular commentary duties.

ATR show the odd meeting on its USA service and by and large its ok to watch and a tough discipline to master.

[Irish Stamp]

Indeed the Musselburgh card was more like a boxing match and near enough every winner had "US-import" next to it’s name in the RP

[kiwibloodstock]

Its quite amateur in this country, poor prize money and the stock isnt great. looking at the race times, the UK harness horses couldnt compete with OZ, NZ or USA. Most UK horses dont seem to break 2 mins and the UK older horses are winning races in the same times as NZ 2yo`s win their qualifing trial in. Its good fun, but it has a long long way to go before its on par with other countries

[Adrian]

Stella Havard, my cousin, wrote Harness Racing in UK, which at the time of publication (1994) was the text book on the subject.

It will give you a good grounding in the history of the sport.

[Pompete]

Thanks all – some interesting views there.

Adrian, I see the book is available on Amazon (secondhand) so I’m gonna get a copy.

[Author]

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