While Torvald Palema recently captured Sweden's Horse of the Year Award, the performance of the year might be something shared by a group of Sweden's harness racing community

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At the country's year-end awards banquet, racing channel Kanal75 produced a clip of people within the industry using Canadian rock band Nickelback's 'Rockstar', and the result was this entertaining video.

The brainchild of the concept was Swedish driving ace Erik Adielsson.

"I talked to some of the Swedish TV people like a year ago and presented the idea," Adielsson told Trot Insider. "They are often very open to new and different ideas and they jumped on the idea right away."

Canadians will remember Adielsson from the 2003 World Driving Championship as Sweden's representative. Adielsson finished third behind New Zealand's Mark Jones and Canadian Jody Jamieson.

"From what I gather they just waited for the right opportunity to make the most of it," continued Adielsson. "It was the most talked about feature of the yearly gala last Friday so they sure picked a great time to do it, I think."

Kanal 75's head editor Johan Lindberg loved the idea from the moment Adielsson brought it forward.

"I thought it was a great idea when Erik mentioned it but couldn't see then were we could use it," said Lindberg, who produces some 4,500 hours of television content every year.

"When we brainstormed about this year's awards, Erik's idea popped up my mind again. Maybe we should shoot it now? And so we did."

Initially, the video was to feature just Adielsson but was then expanded to include more participants.

"We started with Erik singing the whole song and then realized that others would only have to sing a specific line. The initial reaction when we told people that we were shooting a rock video was 'yeah, right!," said Lindberg. "But when we explained the idea, that the idea was Erik's and that it was a complete rip-off of Nickelback's video most of them thought it was fun. I'm sure that the ones who rejected us were jealous when they saw the result."

Lindberg agreed that it was the hit of the awards night.

"At the awards the crowd went bananas after the video. A lot of laughs and perhaps some goodwill for the sport. The drivers are our stars and when they can do things like this I think they will get even more popular."