The field is now set for the 2014 National Driving Championship at Red Shores Charlottetown following Friday's 'horse draft'.
The 2014 National Driving Championship scheduled for Tuesday, August 26 at Red Shores Racetrack and Casino at Charlottetown Driving Park. Rather than the usual format for assigning drivers, Standardbred Canada conducted a 'draft' for the eight races, similar to a hockey pool style draft. This provided the drivers direct involvement in determining the horses they will drive.
To view the completed fields, click here or view program pages here.
"I was happy with the draft," said driver Billy Davis, Jr. "I'm happy with the horses I'm driving and looking forward to Tuesday."
"I think the draft was a pretty cool thing to do...it was very interesting," said Marc Campbell. "We were all very prepared. The first few rounds went really fast. My first few picks were horses I really wanted to get so overall I'm pretty happy with my drives."
Here’s how the NDC Draft was conducted:
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Thursday, August 21 - Horses and post positions were drawn in the usual manner. Preliminary program pages were distributed to the drivers.
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Friday, August 22 - The drivers took part in a conference call with officials from Standardbred Canada and Red Shores Racetrack & Casino at CDP to conduct the draft as follows:
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First, there was a draw to determine the order of the draft. (first through eighth) That order reversed after each round
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The first driver selected any one of the horses from the entire pool of 64 horses in the 8 races, available in round one. Then the same followed for the second through eighth drivers from the remaining pool of horses. Round two through eight followed the same format.
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Each driver was asked to choose once from post positions 1 through 8. Once a driver selected a horse, that horse’s post position was not available to the driver for future selections. However, because of the rules of the draft and the picks made, some drivers did in the final rounds, receive a post position that they had already selected. Drivers in the draft, and officials, voted unanimously to this rule modification.
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The NDC will take place on Tuesday, August 26 at Red Shores Racetrack and Casino at Charlottetown Driving Park in conjunction with a meeting of all of the province’s Premiers who will be on hand for the event. The event is being hosted with the support of the PEI 2014 Fund as part of the 150th Anniversary celebration of the historic 1864 Charlottetown Conference that led to the creation of our nation.
Our drivers received the program pages yesterday evening in preparation for today's draft. Check out what's going on in the Road to the NDC: Day 2.