Stirling, Scotland – The Scottish Harness Racing Club (SHRC) has recently week announced its delight at the decision from the British Harness Racing Club (BHRC) to award the Roosevelt Bowl, Roosevelt Cup and Prakas trot races to Corbiewood for the 2016 season.
Having staged races solely for pacers since 2004, the SHRC have welcomed the challenge of staging these high profile trot races on the UK's smallest hard track (three eighths of a mile). It is anticipated that the races will be incorporated into the two day meeting on August 6th and 7th to celebrate Corbiewood's Golden Anniversary – 50 years of harness racing. Le Trot events are also being sought.
Corbiewood is the longest continuous running track in Great Britain and also stages the highest number of meetings each season, with in excess of 20 fixtures scheduled for the 2016 season following on from the 23 meetings in 2015.
With uncertainty over the track's future due to land redevelopment in the surrounding area, the 2016 season will not only be a chance to celebrate fifty years of racing but also an opportunity, should the redevelopment begin as scheduled, to go out on a high. The future of Scottish harness racing remains uncertain however as an alternative facility has not yet been secured.
In order to showcase the various types of racing that have been staged at Corbiewood since 1966 in one action-packed weekend, the SHRC committee hoped to attract trotters back to the track to emulate the days when horses trotted the tight mile at Corbiewood.
Some of the top flight trotters who visited the track include KAVALIER HOFF (Den., 1983, Pay Dirt-Silvie Hoff – winner of numerous Free For All trots), DUTCH OLDESON (Hol., 1986, Worthy Dean-Usta Oldeson – mile record holder in 2.07.5 at Corbiewood), TANO SENSEI (Den., 1991, Napoletano-Kiola Egekkaer), RB GREYSTAR (Can., 1989, Parisien Ideal-Sheer Trouble – winner of 3 consecutive Roosevelt Cups in 1994-1996), MR B (Swe., 1991, Ron B Hanover-Lady Valentine, Corbiewood mile and a quarter record holder in 2.41.1 who eventually campaigned with success in Canada) and COUCH DOCTOR (USA, 1997, Armbro Goal-Psychiatrist – winner of 14 from 18 starts in the UK in 2001 before being returned to race on mainland Europe where he amassed over $500,000).
It is hoped that in conjunction with these prestigious trots the club can host juvenile races alongside a pacing Free For All and handicap races, with the aim being that there will be 'a race for all' across the weekend.
The Prakas is a series for British-bred trotters, established to support the breeding of trotters on British soil. The series is named after the 1985 Hambletonian winner, who later went on to win Trotter of the Year. He became the first horse to trot the race in a sub-1.55 time, clocking 1.54.3 in the final heat. He was part-owned by expatriate gastroenterologist Dr Iain Mackenzie, who donated a service fee to set up the fund from which the interest would be used.
The Roosevelt Cup is named after Roosevelt Raceway in New York, which was the first track where totalisator betting took place in America and where the mobile start was first used. For many years it hosted an international trot series, recently revived at Yonkers.
Roosevelt closed in 1988, but lives on at Tir Prince: Billy Williams having ordered a replica. The Roosevelt was the brainchild of Noel Simpson, the New Zealander at the heart of the Prestatyn revolution in British harness racing in the sixties. The first Roosevelt in 1963, run in two heats and a final, was won by Old Dan driven by one young John Blissett, trained by father Charlie.
The Roosevelts (Cup and Bowl) are open to all trotters, including those imported from France under the Le Trot initiative in conjunction with Trot Britain and history was made in 2015 with the first non-Standardbred winner, the Trotteur Francais, Show Business.
By Sarah Thomas, for Harnesslink