One of the most enjoyable nights I spent at a racetrack this year was on a night when there was no racing at all being held.
Okay, I'm cheating a bit because it was the Friday night before the Prix d'Amerique in Paris and I was leading a tour of people from North America to the great French trotting spectacle.
On Friday night, however, there was no racing at the Vincennes track in Paris and yet the joint was packed with people. The draws were two-fold: one was a horse sale to begin at 7 p.m. and the other was an all-day trade show held under the grandstand.
The trade show was a veritable orgy for harness horse devotees---everything you ever wanted was for sale or on display.
Many French stud farms had booth extolling the merits of their stallions and passing out slick brochures. There were vendors showcasing harness, bridles, and equipment and others promoting everything from nutritional and vet supplies to horse trailers. Equine-themed jewelry or art? Yes, indeed.
Someone spoke English at virtually every booth and at virtually every booth there were complimentary glasses of wine and wedges of cheese (after all, this is France!).
I lingered long at the booths staffed by representatives of the various European trotting associations----many of the other countries in Europe had representative there to talk about trotting in their country.
I spent some time at the booth of the Swiss trotting organization and learned that there are 14 harness tracks in that tiny nation set in the Alps.
When I later passed that information on to an American trainer, he expressed disbelief, saying, "I didn't think there was enough flat ground in Switzerland to have a racetrack."
I had the most delightful conversation with Dr. Helena Pokorna, a veterinarian who is the president of the Czech Trotting Association in Prague. She told me how proud she was of her stallion Crysta's Best, a trotter I remember quite well when he raced on this side of the Atlantic in the early 1990s. He won the Breeders Crown as a 2-year-old at Pompano after breaking stride at the start. He's now a successful European stallion.
Dr. Pokorna inundated me with reading material about trotting in her country. While I certainly don't read or speak Czech, it's easy to enjoy the magazines and program. I always enjoy checking out the sires of horses entered to race. A quick glance turned up other Breeders Crown winners such as Fast Photo, Defiant One, and Sugarcane Hanover and other trotters by Donerail, Mr Vic, Wall Street Banker and others familiar to North American racing fans.
I noticed races as short as 1670 meters or just over a mile to 2180 meters or about 1-3/8 miles. I saw photos of some races contested clockwise and some contested counterclockwise. The equipment and sulkies all seems quite modern.
The purses were modest, but that's to be expected in a country where the trotting sport is getting established. Trotting is becoming established not only in the Czech Republic, but also throughout Eastern Europe and I am anxious to follow its progress.
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.