Racing in different circles
by Trey Nosrac
You cannot evaluate the level of competition in isolation. Instead, success is relative to other actors’ capabilities, market positions, talents, strategic behaviors, and resources.
The current going rate for a first-round Major League Baseball prospect is about $8 million. Hiring Leonardo DiCaprio to carry your theater production also costs millions. After the stars and the big stages, there are other leagues made up of talented competitors who don’t quite meet the elite standard, or who got passed over. Baseball and theater have entire ecosystems built around those second-string players. Our sport should offer similar systems. Here is one proposal for a harness racing “League of Our Own,” where horses in the lower tiers aren’t a problem; they are the foundation.
THE INDEPENDENT LEAGUE MODEL
Each July, Major League Baseball franchises draft young players. There are 20 rounds of selection in which the top prospects sign for serious money. There is another draft for foreign players. But for the rest of the players, the phone does not ring.
But those undrafted players aren’t worthless – they are still good ballplayers. These lesser-regarded players chase opportunities. They attend tryout camps. They submit résumés. They compile video clip files. A fortunate group of players, managers, and administrators find work in the Independent Leagues and sign modest contracts. You can find a game on most summer nights across America.
Now adopt the Independent League concept for harness horses.
WHERE WE FIND OUR HORSES: THE “SECOND CHANCERS”
In the fall of 2024, with high hopes, I purchased a beautiful trotting colt. Thousands of people across the harness universe did the same thing. You all know the drill of the next six months: training bills, staking fees, vet work, equipment, and shoeing.
Will he qualify?
Will he race?
Will he be the one?
At some point in 2025, many of us confronted a reality: our 2-year-old horse isn’t fast enough. Not broken. Not unsound. Just not capable of keeping up with the faster horses. Eventually, we found the trotter a good home and sold him for $6,000.
He was a fine physical specimen, just not a racehorse for the current, unforgiving system. And that is precisely the universe we want. Because in a different league, built intentionally for these horses, that same colt becomes something else entirely — an athlete with a future.
THE CORE PROPOSAL: BUILD A LEAGUE FROM HORSES THAT DID NOT MAKE IT
Instead of starting with expensive yearlings and hoping they become racehorses, the League of Our Own begins by acquiring physically sound trotters that trained at 2, but could not (or did not) reach the qualifying standard. These horses have already been pre-screened by owners and trainers and deemed unlikely to earn a dollar in the traditional system, but they may still be capable of racing in a slower, more balanced league.
STEP ONE: THE LEAGUE ACQUIRES THE HERD
The League’s first job is to build a uniform “draft pool.” The league operators scour online auction boards, dispersals, private contacts, and trainer networks looking for 2-year-old trotters who will turn 3 on Jan. 1 – horses on the market from owners cutting their losses. They can be homebred from Mississippi or a million-dollar Lexington yearling. They all need to be in the same boat – the same age, the same sex, and the same gait.
The cost target is simple:
• Maximum purchase price: $6,000 per horse
• Goal: 110 horses
• Budget: $700,000
And here is the crucial point: No horses with meaningful racing success are included. No trotters who have already proven they can keep up with the fast ones. We do not want a league where five horses dominate, and the rest exist as background scenery. We want competitive balance. The League forms this herd of second chancers, horses projected to race in the 2:08 to 2:14 range.
STEP TWO: THE LEAGUE PREPARES A SALE – A YEARLING AUCTION, BUT BETTER
Fast forward to the holiday season.
Now the League owns 110 trotters in stalls and paddocks on league property. They have been jogging. They are acclimated. Now the League does something clever: It stages a public sale. This sale looks like a yearling sale, but it’s more informative. Unlike yearlings, these horses come with evidence.
Each horse will appear in a catalog that includes:
• The original pedigree and history
• History as a 2-year-old
• New video and photos (in harness, in motion)
• Introductory notes about attitude and soundness
It is, in effect, a “Slightly-used trotting colt sale.”
A sale designed for ordinary people, not billionaires hunting for the next champion.
STEP THREE: THE AUCTION (AND THE BUILT-IN FINANCIAL ENGINE)
The sale is held online and in person. Buyers are encouraged to escape the snow and visit the facility beforehand – just like Lexington, but without the seven-digit expectations. The opening bid is $5,000. Some horses may receive no bids and be declared a “no sale.” That’s fine. Those horses remain on league property as replacements.
But many horses will sell because we’ve created something rare in harness racing, a more level playing field.
Let’s say 100 horses sell at an average price, generating total sales revenue of $1,000,000. Now something important happens. The League receives some income immediately – without gambling, without a slot subsidy.
In this example, the League shows a profit of roughly $300,000. This amount becomes the seed money for an Awards Pool.
To recap:
• The League acquires overlooked horses cheaply.
• The League creates a competitive “draft pool.”
• The League sells those horses in a structured auction.
• The League begins to fund its own prize/awards pool.
• The owners race in a balanced league at ages 3 and 4.
We are building a business model with a wider funnel, a place for understudies, a herd of horses that are too slow for the traditional game, but ideally suited for a new one. The owners have fixed costs and a chance to win money. Once we create this environment, what happens next may be shocking.
Race where, for what, when, how, and why? All will be revealed.
