The Canadian Sportsman

This is the second time I have contributed an answer to this question, and I am sure that it will not be the last, because each new day brings it's own fledgling, harness racing annoyance.

Don't let the word "fledging" fool you, however, because only a trained eye can tell the the difference between a baby vulture and a baby dove.

In essence, a small beef might eventually take flight as a big side of Angus prime so it's best to keep a sharp lookout overhead for falling debris.

Obviously, horsemen don't like when news people say, words like "carriage" or "jockey" when they're doing a story on harness racing, but those nails-on-a-blackboard words usually come from the obviously clueless guys who come along once in a blue moon from the mainstream media.

It's the less obvious faux pas, however, that comes from within the harness industry (sort of) that ruins everybody's fun and brings ants to the picnic.

Witness the recent media craziness about a nice horse names Auckland Reactor. I'm sure he's a talented horse, and far better than any horse I've ever had that's for sure, but his grand adventure to the USA was grotesquely over-hyped by story-starved writers who should have known he was heading into dangerous waters.

There are some places in the world where you just can't swim without getting eaten by a great white or a salt water crocodile. When you see some brave person venture into these waters, it's better to look away than to cheer them on.

So Auckland Reactor arrived and promptly got eaten by three horses, but the winning horse had the misfortune of being trained by a guy who has more eyes on him than the last chicken wing on Super Bowl Sunday.

There is an unwritten rule in harness racing: "It's great to win, but don't win too much."

There's another unwritten rule in certain, but not all, harness writing circles: "If you don't have anything bad to say about somebody, don't say anything."

Folks like to say that heaven is the wind that blows through the ears of a horse, but it's also true, and a heck of a lot less anthropomorphic, to wax poetic and say that the wind that comes from certain harness writers doesn't come from between their ears.

Sadly, Auckland Reactor got beat again at Harrah's Chester but this time that defeat went virtually unnoticed because it wasn't the alleged bad guy who beat him, thusly there was nothing bad to write about anyone. Oh well?

There's a certain extended benefit to being both an experienced trainer and a writer, despite the letters to my editor telling him that I should go back to school and take a course in journalism 101.

An experienced trainer knows the difference between time and talent, and an experienced horsemen all knew that Aukland Reactor got beat by three horses, not just one. This fact alone proves that it wasn't the teletimer that beat him.

Another part of this extended benefit is that an experienced trainer is not hypnotized by hype. All, not most, but all of my trainer friends saw this iceberg approaching long before that guy in the crow's nest starting screaming about how unfair icebergs can be.

Perhaps this gripe of mine is a tad obtuse, but I am one of those people who chooses to look away when something, be it horse or human, takes a dip in treacherous waters.

~ David Mattia