Racing Summits

The USTA had a summit yesterday, where around 40 insiders shared their views about harness racing, and what can be done to improve it (in several areas). There were a great many takeaways from the meeting, but one thing struck me as very interesting - the summary, based on news outlet.

Read these in order - the summary via US Trotting and the summary via Harness Racing Update.

There's not only a chasm on getting people together to fix problems in racing, there's also a chasm on how the problems are even reported. In the US Trotting summary, Mark Ford (who made a solid point about why many of you stopped buying horses) is not even listed as being there.

Harness racing will never move forward unless the business is honest with itself. It doesn't need cheerleaders, it doesn't need decisions based on feel, or not wanting to hurt someone's feelings.

There's an old line in racing: When you don't want to make a decision, form a committee. I understand your frustrations with these meetings (this is a sport that cannot even seem to agree if kicking a horse looks bad or not), and I share them. But let's hope this summit does more than just put another mountain to climb in front of the sport. It has enough of those already.