Have you ever wondered if playing video games is tougher than piloting a race-ready Standardbred? If you haven’t, James MacDonald, Canada’s reigning world driving champion, has done his best to try to find the answer for you.
MacDonald recently hooked up with Teddy Wilson, the award-winning co-host of the Space channel’s flagship show, ‘InnerSpace,’ at Woodbine, Mohawk Park in an attempt to get to the bottom of things.
In a piece entitled ‘Sports Vs eSports,’ MacDonald and Wilson take to the Campbellville, Ont. oval in a double-seated jog cart so the co-host can get a feel for being at the reins of Ruff Me Up, an aged Real Artist gelding. Afterward, the duo heads indoors to see who holds the bragging rights in the digital realm, as they end up tangling in a couple of Street Fighter rounds.
“You can ask anyone that knows me well, I think eSports are very hard – they’re a lot of fun, but they’re very hard and frustrating,” MacDonald explained. “When you start playing them a lot it gets expensive because, if you guys are like me, you have many broken controllers.”
When pressed on the subject a bit more, MacDonald didn’t exactly give a definitive answer to the episode’s overarching question, but he did state that driving harness horses is very hard.
“They’re both very difficult, obviously…. (but driving horses is) very difficult. You’ve got to get the right trip and everything has got to go right for you to end up in the winner’s circle.”
(With files from Space)