After another year of disruption around the world brought about by the impact of COVID 19, it is even more important to take the opportunity to wish all loyal Harnessbred followers of my weekly articles including those who view them through Facebook, compliments of the festive season.
As always I thoroughly appreciate the comments, observations and additional contributions regarding my articles that appear on the Facebook pages, many of them adding to my knowledge of harness racing history worldwide. In particular I would like to acknowledge the Victorian Square Trotters Association and Boort Trotting Club who regularly share my articles with their Facebook followers together with the supporters in South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and NSW who commented on the articles on racetracks in their states. Bendigo’s Noel Ridge is another whose supportive comments are much appreciated. A special thanks to numerous other regular followers – your likes are noted.
Throughout my articles I have endeavoured to incorporate an Australasian element as often as possible together with North American and the occasional European content – more of that next year. It is not possible to cover all relevant aspects of local history in the racetrack series but at least it has been attempted so as to provide some content for future reviewers.
Special thanks go to my wife Catharine for her proof reading prowess especially in correcting my grammatical blemishes. Once again to Dean Baring, my appreciation for the opportunity to provide you our readers with a variety of articles covering a range of harness racing history, award functions and more.
In the six and a half years that I have been contributing regular weekly articles to Harnessbred (over 350 articles), readers have been provided with a range of historical stories together with topical NZ based issues in my column. It is especially enjoyable delving back into the past to bring you insights into the history of harness racing in Australasia and soon those of North America which is proving most enlightening as their tracks are researched.
Looking ahead to what can you expect next year in 2022 (current planned articles to be written) : continuation of the Racetracks of the World feature series – North America and Europe after that; a few more articles on some Australian broodmares of note; 50 years of NZ Breeders Stakes by decade plus regular features such as NZ Awards; Addington Harness Hall of Fame inductees; a NZ Cup article; NZ Broodmares of Year/Excellence Award winners and a series on past Melbourne Pacers Interdominions and anything else that might be appropriate to appear in my regular weekly column.
I’ll be taking a brief break from writing over the festive season with contributions recommencing with articles early in the New Year.
All the best for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Peter Craig
22 December 2021
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
Driving The Future Of Harness Racing
