Taking the heat out of the 'red hots' : the Americanisation of harness racing in Australia

The conduct of Australian harness racing, or trotting as it commonly and somewhat misleadingly known, has been radically overhauled since the late 1970s. This resulted from a belief shared amongst recently imposed statutory overseers, and some of harness racing's own administrators, that the sport's survival depended on restructuring, modernisation, and 'Americanisation'. The makeover appeared necessary to guarantee continuing relevancy and popularity, to instil confidence in it as a medium for gambling, and to dispel the lingering, malodorous connotations implied in that epithet so loathed within the industry, the 'red hots' (a pejorative phrase that had been part of the Australian sporting lexicon for most of the twentieth century). Amongst the revisionist measures that have had the most profound effect on the sport have been the almost complete usurpation of the traditional means of starting races- the 'standing start' with distance handicaps method- by the mobile starting barrier, increases in the circumferences and widths of racing tracks, a concentration on sprint races, and the inclusion at many tracks of a 'sprint lane' in the last lap for the final run to the winning post.