by Trey Nosrac

Why doesn’t our sport attract more people? Empathy is a huge culprit.

Empathy is:

• Understanding a person from another person’s frame of reference.

• Vicariously experiencing another person’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts.

• The ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person or fictional character.

You may notice each definition contains the word people. Horses are magnificent animals, but they are not human. Without empathy, our growth as a sport is limited. The special sauce from emotional connections that we form with other athletes and teams does not transfer to horse racing.

We all want a good story. Empathy is a critical ingredient in any good story. Sports are personal stories of struggles, overcoming challenges, and setbacks with individuals or teams of people as the focus. We vicariously experience journeys and emotions using our sports as avatars. Humans can share experiences. We may have played the sport at some level, making it even more relatable. Fans of teams, leagues, sports, or even individual players can create communities based around people.

The key word is people. The more humans are involved in a sport like ours, the more likely other humans will find a footing. Beneath those helmets and familiar colors, our drivers help a little, but not enough. We need more people, from our farm workers to highly invested owners and everyone in between, to create more empathy, stories, and engagement – but how?

After two margaritas and two hours on Taco Tuesday at Tortilla Town Mexican Restaurant, here is an idea for harness horse racing. I am selecting some people in our sport as stalking horses (a stalking horse is a figure used to test a concept or mount a challenge anonymously on behalf of a third party).

The following conversation is FICTIONAL.

Imagine that Adam Bowden and his sidekick Shaun Laungani, a pair of fun, intelligent, competitive fellows, have just finished shooting an episode of Trackside Chat (Big thumbs up for the show). They are sitting around talking smack.

Suddenly, Adam has an idea: “Of all the yearling trotters we consigned or sold as agents, what 2-year-old trotters do you feel will earn the most money in 2025? I’ll make a list of eight. You make a list. We will make out cases and whittle it down to our final eight.”

And they do.

Looking at the final eight, Adam says, “These are the Diamond Creek Devil Cats. I’m calling five other farms, maybe seven, and asking them to do the same thing we did.”

“Why?” asks Sean.

“Let’s organize a league.”

“For what?”

“For fun, for fans to relate to, for interest stimulation, and the hell of it.”

“You want to create a competition between breeding farms.”

“Yeah, every farm gets a franchise and gives the franchise a name like…

The Hanover Hailstorms

The Winback Warthogs

The Crawford Crawdads

The Blue Chip Monks

The Hunterton Hyenas

The Southwind Silverfish

The Concord Grapes.”

Shaun asks, “What are the parameters of this insanity?”

“Very simple, only trotting yearlings they sold or consigned make up their draft pool. Each farm staff drafts eight now 2-year-olds in training to formulate their team roster. The farm team must stick with these eight trotters all season with no substitutes, so there will be attrition. They must submit their roster on April Fools’ Day.

“The farm teams have nothing to do with training or trainers. Like other sports teams, there will be a website with team rosters. Before the season begins, each team will create a website highlighting their horses and some staff members who helped raise them. Once the racing season begins, the earnings will be posted and updated. The team with the highest aggregate earnings at the end of the racing season will win the title.”

“What title?”

“A massive old, repurposed Bowling Trophy from a yard sale with the words: Major Farms Earnings Recruits Championship of 2025.”

“No money.”

“Nah, not yet. It will probably cost a few bucks to find someone to set up and administer the league, but damn, it would be fun, and the bragging would be awesome.”

Shaun shifted from skeptic to supporter, “Posting the undated League standings on a site like HRU would be cool. I could see regular fans gravitating to the league, and regular folks could get to know the farm members and other people and attach faces to the team horses.”

“Those of us in the breeding world would have fun. The question is, would other people find a league like this intriguing? What would tweak their interest or make them care?”

Shaun said, “Not sure, but a league with people cheering for a farm, the home state of the farm, the staff, or owners would have lots of opportunities to create human connections. I can’t see any downsides.”

Adam added, “During racing season, a list with all the team horses scheduled to race should be available weekly. People would have horses to cheer for and against. People who tune in to cheer for their team may wager or get involved in ownership.”

“And more people will become attached to the stories of the trotting horses, their breeding staffs, the trainers, and the drivers that are part of their teams. I could see side bets among friends on the various teams.”

“Who knows, maybe in the future, fans could place future wagers on teams like the Warthogs and Devil Cats.”

* * *

Would something like this work? Nobody knows, but then again, everybody knows what will happen if we don’t try crazy stuff like this.