While many people in the harness racing industry notice less mainstream newspaper coverage, few are frustrated enough to actually make a statement about it. Enter Don McNiven
.
One half of the duo that so successfully managed Ingersoll's Killean Acres for decades, McNiven issued a letter to the editor of his local daily, The London Free Press, and on today's edition of Trot Radio McNiven and Norm Borg ask fans of racing to do the same.
Episode 134 – Don McNiven
Audio Format: MP3 audio
Host: Norm Borg
The letter as printed in the Free Press appears below.
Harness racing now ignored
To say that Free Press coverage of standardbred racing is on the back burner, would be justified. In fact, often it is non-existent.
During the past several months, the coverage of entries, results and editorials in the hub of all of Canadian harness racing has been unacceptable.
We understand the days of results from Quebec, New York, Michigan and New Jersey are past and not feasible in the clustered sports pages.
However, there are a multitude of training centres in the Free Press marketing area representing thousands of horses, drivers, trainers, owners and of course fans, who supply their professional athletes at tracks such as Windsor, Dresden, London Western Fair, Clinton, Woodstock, Flamboro, Sarnia Hiawatha, Grand River, the WEG tracks at Woodbine and Mohawk, as well as Hanover Raceway and Georgian Downs on a weekly basis.
It should also be understood that a host of bewildered Free Press readers, like this 78-year-old gent, do not have access to the Internet and rely on reading it in the daily paper.
The shortcomings were very evident recently when there was absolutely no coverage on the richest three-year-old pace in the world — the North American Cup — at Mohawk.
For an industry that employs 50,000 people with billions in capital spending in Ontario, harness racing deserves some space on the spreads in The London Free Press sports pages.
Don McNiven
Ingersoll
It is a blessing the press
It is a blessing the press is covering harnes racing as little as it is. Any greater coverage would drive away anything but insiders!
Here is the E-mail address
Here is the E-mail address of the Manager Editor . .knock your self out . . .
[email protected]
Perhaps a letter-writing
Perhaps a letter-writing campaign is in order. It would appear that you have to beat the press over the head with a stick to get them to pay any attention to harness racing.
I personally have written to the Toronto Star on several occasions berating them for their abominable coverage of this sport and reminding them of the terrific Canadian content they are ignoring. The Somebeachsomewhere story was as good if not better than the Secratariat stories of years gone by but no one was listening. All we can do is keep trying and hope that someone will pay attention before it's too late.