Rewarding the Bread and Butter of Harness Racing

The Claiming Crown for thoroughbred racing is being held this Saturday, July 25, 2009 at Canterbury Park (yes, they used to race a brief standardbred meet) in Minnesota. The idea behind the Claiming Crown is to give those horses which keep racetracks running a chance to run for money and glory. In the case of the Claiming Crown, there are seven races running for a combined purse of $600,000. To qualify for the Claiming Crown, a horse must have started for a claiming price of $7,500 to $35,000 sometime during the year. Horses then must win regional events in order to qualify for the final. Nomination fees are cheap. If you know the horse you want to nominate, the fee is $100 before April 17; $500 after April 17 with a June 5 deadline. If you are an owner that doesn't know which horse you want to nominate the fee is $250 but you must name the horse by June 5. The races are run as starter allowances so you can not claim a horse out of any of the qualifying races or the final. Most of the purse money for the races are provided by the host tracks.

What does harness racing do for the owners of our claiming stock? After all, if you had no stake horses, tracks will be able to card programs but if you get rid of the claimers, how many tracks would not be able to fill cards? Yes, some tracks have begun scheduling late closing series for claimers which is a good start but we should do more.

What if we had our version of the Claiming Crown? We can have late closing series at each track for different levels of claiming prices for trotters and pacers and the winners of the late closing series can move on to regional qualifying races. The winners of these regional races can move on to the national championships. Let's have the claiming championships the night before the Breeders Crown at the track which will host the following year's Breeders Crown races (using it as a trial run). If we offer meaningful purses for these races, we can attract new owners. After all, if there was a chance your $5,000 claimer could be racing for $100,000 wouldn't that entice you?

And for fans, imagine the interest of the fans at Scarborough Downs, Cal Expo, Monticello and others that get to see one of their horses racing in regional and national championships. Make sure we have races for the $5,000 claimer as well as the $50,000 claimer.

Here is hoping the powers that be get moving on it and we have the Claiming Championships in 2010.