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
History of the horse in Britain at his destination. Horses had been raced in Britain for hundreds of years by the time of King James VI of Scotland (1567 – 1625), but he brought the sport as it is known today into England from Scotland while he was king of both countries (1603 – 1625); he organised public races in a number of places, and continued to import quality animals aimed at the development of a new, lighter, faster type of horse. When Gervase Markham published his "Cavalarice, or the English Horseman" in 1617, farmers were not only using pack horses, farm horses and cart horses,