by Trey Nosrac

“The riches of the game are in the thrills, not the money.”

Ernie Banks

Listening to enthusiastic people talk about their exotic hobbies and interests is enjoyable. This morning, I set down my “Stuff Happens After My Third Cup” coffee mug, grabbed a pen, and composed a list of people I know and the things they do that make them happy. They were not obvious activities like watching sports, television, and movies, but listed pastimes a bit more esoteric and interactive.

Here is a quick list of 20 people and their special interests:

• Serious birdwatching
• Music composing and recording
• International island travel
• Playing a round of golf in every American state (now on to foreign lands)
• Rare book collecting
• RV travel
• Competitive chess
• Competitive bridge
• Jigsaw puzzles
• Restoring vintage cars
• Playwriting
• Archaeology
• Assembling a massive music library of pre-1970 recordings
• Local theater
• Fossil collecting
• Antique collecting
• Poetry writing
• Wood carving
• Operating fantasy sports leagues
• Model train collecting
• Flyfishing
• Metal detecting

People on this list spend considerable time and money satisfying their itches to participate in their niches. Listening to them talk about their passions fires me up. I pepper them with questions of who, what, where, how, and why they do what they do. I never ask how much money they spend on their passions, but I suspect many spend more on their passions than we do on harness racing.

For example, a person on this list was a competitive bridge player. There is no purse money or income for this passion. There are many expenses, such as entry fees, travel (sometimes international), lodging, cruises for bridge players, club memberships, etc.

Or a few months ago, a friend rhapsodically talked about his annual two-week expedition to Utah to “break rocks,” a slang terminology for fossil searching. He did not mention the costs for permits, travel, food, lodging, destroying his vehicle on rutty roads, and countless other expenses – he was over the moon about what fossils he found (“my biggest find ever”), the people he met, and the fun he had. He and some of his fellow fossil enthusiasts travel internationally to pursue their interests.

Our sport offers the same inner satisfaction, but the questioning from strangers is annoyingly different. To a metal detector, you might ask what treasures they have unearthed, what equipment they use, what exactly they are looking for, where they search, and how they plan a day of searching. In horse racing, the person you are trying to reach often skips over the inner satisfaction and mystery of racing horses and quickly gets to deflating questions, “How much does it cost? Is it cruel? Is their doping? Is it fixed?”

In horse racing, it feels like we start on the wrong foot. We are on the defensive. Look back to my list. Those 20 people representing other sports and hobbies do not carry this baggage as they spread the good word about their passion.

We all know that a sprinkle of magic is attached to the majestic horses carrying our dreams. We know our horse affliction or addiction is more than dollars and cents. We know that jogging a horse as the sun rises is a wonderful place to be. We know the thrill of your horse competing in a race. But it isn’t very easy to push new prospects to that point.

Perhaps an approach to our sport where money was less critical, an introduction that puts the horse before the costs, the magic before the money, is the best path. I think fractional ownership stables follow this model and are very valuable assets. Let me suggest a slight tweak: set up a group of new owners geographically, less than an hour from the training track, to physically get people to watch those training laps, touch the horses, smell the smells, hear the hoof beats, feel, and see the magic.

In the future, circumstances beyond our control may force us to reconfigure to more hobby and less business. In our hearts, we feel the clock ticking for the harness racing model as we know it. The next series of columns in this space are canaries in the coal mine. They will be radical, sometimes painful suggestions for when funding dries up, yet the hobby remains.

The money for racing may decline, but the list above illustrates that people who gladly pay for their thrills often pay a steep price and do not expect to earn money. Money will no longer be our master in the new racing world. In the old world, a powerful motivator was that we all harbored the unrealistic dream that we would find a racing gem and make a million dollars. Participating in our sport with the mindset of not making money racing and raising racing trotters and pacers will be a massive mental hurdle for many.

None of us are Nostradamus. We do not know how the sport will evolve — perhaps a new method of competing, possibly people who love the sport who play in a new world will need to find motivation in jogging their horse in the morning sun, maybe time trials of 2:22, cleaning a stall, feeding carrots over a stall gate, meeting new people, enjoying our history, sharing new ideas, breathing fresh air, meeting new friends, and staying connected with old friends. Could you, would you, remain in a world of harness horses without the carrot of a payday?

The people on my list do it every day.