Racing: Harness set to launch out of the blocks with Friday focus

Harness racehorse Triple G, pictured running at Addington, is the standout horse at Cambridge tonight. / Race Images

Harness racing’s fightback starts today.

The code promises one of its biggest days of the past five years, with major announcements coming out of Harness Racing New Zealand (HRNZ) and TAB Trackside launching its new Friday Night Lights coverage of the code.

Both are well overdue, as harness racing has yet to gain any real traction from the huge financial injection that came with the TAB/Entain deal last year.

The code has been hamstrung by leadership changes forced by ill health and retirement that left it paddling, while the sister – or rival – code, thoroughbred racing, has made a series of huge announcements around stakes and new races such as the NZB Kiwi.

HRNZ has a new chief executive in Brad Steele, who officially started in his role this week, and some major announcements will be made in Christchurch today.

Good news is expected around stakes for some of harness racing’s biggest events, and rumours are rife of new slot races being launched.

The announcements are expected around 3pm.

Soon afterwards, the TAB will launch its new era in television coverage of harness racing with the Friday Night Lights show.

It will feature leading presenters Greg O’Connor and Craig Thompson on a studio panel, with presenters Marc Cookson (south) and Nicole Sims (north) trackside to maximise the information and analysis available to punters.

The TAB has moved more meetings to Friday nights to make the timeslot the focus of the harness racing week, and the coverage will include features and personality pieces to try to drive engagement with the code.

The new show will be a welcome return to the level of coverage harness racing used to enjoy when presenters attended most meetings.

That coverage disappeared during Covid-19 restrictions and was slow to return, with harness racing going through a period when it only had presenters on-track for four meetings a year.

Entain has been true to its promise of wanting to drive not only turnover but engagement with the racing codes, believing the two go hand in hand, and Friday Night Lights will ensure harness racing is given a fair chance to lure punters’ eyeballs.

It also comes as what is often a golden time for harness racing turnover every season, as the All Blacks play all their domestic tests on Saturdays, so Friday night harness doesn’t clash with Super Rugby anymore and over half tonight’s races will be completed before the NRL coverage starts.

While rarely spoken about, that post-Super Rugby gap provides a boost every season, because many of the sport/racing crossover punters have fewer Friday night viewing options and are more likely to tune in to live Trackside action.

Tonight’s Addington and Cambridge meetings may not provide the best harness racing of the season, but there will still be 18 winners to be found, as well as features like the one screening tonight on South Island trotter Bet N Win and his Queensland campaign, which starts at Albion Park in Brisbane tomorrow night.

The standout horse at Cambridge is Triple G (Race 7, No 7), who was a Derby contender last season and has raced far better horses than those he meets tonight.

He comes in beautifully under tonight’s 2700m mobile conditions and looked ready when winning at the workouts last weekend.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.