Napoleon couldn’t sustain his dominance of Europe, but the masters of French trotting have certainly done so
.
Trotters in France last year competed for purses of more than C$340.8 million and the average purse offered was C$31,030.
That’s according to information reported recently by the Union Europeenne du Trot, the information-gathering organization for European harness racing.
Expressed in Euros, the purses in France came to 214,524,000 and the average purse was 19,531 Euros.
Those numbers from France dwarf the purses from other European trotting strongholds. Italy reported total purses of 97.6 million Euros while Sweden checked in with 69.1 million Euros. Norway was fourth with purses of 17.4 million Euros and Finland finished fifth with purses at 15.1 million Euros.
It must be pointed out, however, that in the Nordic nations, separate totals are kept for standardbreds and cold-bloods. Norway is the heart of cold-blood trotting with purses of $12.1 million Euros for the cold-bloods while Finland offers its beloved “Finn horse” cold-bloods 7.1 million Euros. Sweden offers 6.2 million Euros to its limited cold-blood population.
France leads its rival nations in terms of average purse while Sweden edges Italy for second place. The average purse in Sweden is 8,551 Euros (C$13,589) while Italy (which carded 13,601 trotting races in 2008) has an average purse of 7,124 Euros (C$11,322).
The nations named above are the powerhouses of European trotting while countries like Estonia, Slovenia, Malta, and the Czech Republic are---well, not exactly the poorhouses---but certainly far behind the leaders.
Actually, these are the nations I admire the most because I know it isn’t easy to sustain the sport in these areas. I was in Tallinn, Estonia in 2007 and was lucky enough to be there on a racing night. The crowd was sparse, but the racing was intense and I enjoyed every minute of it. And I would love to visits tracks and farms in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Malta. They truly must love trotting there because no one’s getting rich.
Dean Hoffman, one of North America's most prolific harness racing journalists and member of the U.S. Harness Racing Hall of Fame, offers SC website readers his weekly look at international standardbred racing through his eyes.