There was one heart stopping incident in the mid seventies which could have halted Dean Chapple’s love affair with harness racing before it got off the ground.

There’s nothing I’ve enjoyed more over the years than the many conversations I’ve had with veteran horsemen - especially harness horsemen who were around in the days when the sport was drawing big crowds all around Australia.

Wayne Dimech was in his mid-teens when Hondo Grattan was dominating the harness racing headlines in the early 1970’s. He had obviously inherited the harness racing genes from his Maltese forebears.

Ian Verning doesn’t mind his life long nickname of “Spud” although he is frustrated by the fact that he has no idea of its origins.

Australian harness racing currently boasts a plethora of talented drivers in the 20-25 age bracket. Those who appear regularly on metropolitan tracks enjoy the bulk of available media attention.

Trainers lucky enough to have a runner at a major trots meeting are conscious of the atmosphere only big time racing can generate. Miracle Mile night is something else again.

The 2022 Penrith racing year concluded on December 29th with what looked to be a run of the mill programme on paper. It took a rare training double by father and daughter duo David and Katie McGill, to inject a little “buzz” into the night.

Sean Grayling is emerging as a pretty serious race driver, and he appears to have a good handle on the art of training a harness horse.

Abbey Turnbull’s winning drive behind Dalvey Robyn at the Riverina Paceway on Melbourne Cup night was about as good as it gets.

In the days when I was getting to the trots on a regular basis, Amy Day was one of my favourite people. The petite blonde daughter of Neil and Vicki Day was at the mercy of genetic forces from the time of her birth thirty two years ago.

You could fill a decent sized page with the names of trainers and drivers who are second, third or fourth generation harness racing people.

Laurence Dawson is one of many young horsemen who’ve worked hard to carve themselves a niche in harness racing rather than turn their backs on a sport they’ve grown to love.

Scott Adams was quietly chuffed when Humming Top’s number flashed onto the semaphore after the fifth race at Young on August 2nd.

We’d like to share with you a snappy HRNSW promotional video featuring the highlights of the sport in the first half of the current season. This video was produced by Power Productions.

David Brown is one of several trainers alarmed by recent rumblings about the future of the Penrith Paceway. The regular Thursday night meetings are the lifeblood of those trainers who work day jobs.

Stephen Conroy has never forgotten the moment he realised just how much harness racing meant to him. It was a regular Friday night meeting at Harold Park in the mid 1980’s and he’d just won a trophy race with his consistent gelding Saint Albans.

Bill Hansell’s career in harness racing had just begun when the dual Academy Award winning movie “The Quiet Man” was released in 1952. The title of the famous John Wayne classic best describes the persona of Bill Hansell.

I was surprised the first time a polite teenager insisted on helping me unharness one of my horses at a Penrith meeting in 2014.

Leon Jurd has been thinking outside the square for most of his forty four years in harness racing. In a remarkably diversified career, the now 61 year old has made his mark as a driver, trainer and bloodstock agent.

Greg Coney had barely reached his teen years when he first set foot in the bustling north western NSW city of Tamworth - the state’s second largest inland city.