Harness racing in Australia Harness racing in Australia Harness racing, also colloquially known as trotting or the trots, is an important spectator sport in Australia, with large amounts of money wagered annually with bookmakers and the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB). In Australia there are 91 harness racing tracks, which hold over 1,900 meetings annually. There are approximately 2,900 drivers and 4,000 trainers with about 5,000 Standardbred horses foaled and registered each year. Harness racing in Australia is conducted with Standardbred horses racing around a track while pulling a driver in a two-wheeled cart called a "sulky", "gig" or "bike". Standardbred racehorses compete in two
Martin Puryear full-size two-wheeled cart in "The Load" sits poised as if ready to move at a moment's notice, with its twelve-foot harness pole parallel to the ground resting on a center prop. Mounted atop the axle of the cart is a gridded wooden box that encages a white sphere fitted with a glass aperture. The glass aperture faces the rear of the cart, an accessible portal through which a viewer can glimpse the complex interior structure of the wooden sphere. The cart is an immediately recognizable object, although from no particular time or place in history. Two-wheeled carts have been in