Last week we did an opinion piece on why we thought the current voting system in New Zealand for the harness racing horse of the year and all the age group categories was a farce.

We have been thrilled with the response the article generated and the many and varied suggestions that industry participants have put forward to improve the system we suggested.

It is a topic that obviously touched a nerve out there in the wider harness racing community and we are exploring ways with a couple of national bodies about how we could progress this matter further.

One of the most interesting and pertinent replies we received in relation to our article was from Anthony Butt who quite rightly pointed out that all Group 1 races are not created equal.

His suggestion that any Group 1 that is part of the Grand Circuit should attract extra points over and above ordinary Group 1 races makes a lot of sense to us and so we have come up with a second version of a suggested points system taking Anthony's points on board.

Grand Circuit Races   Points   1st – 20   2nd – 12   3rd – 8    4th – 5   5th – 3

Group 1    Points   1st – 15    2nd – 8    3rd – 6    4th – 4    5th – 2 

Group 2    Points   1st – 10    2nd – 6    3rd – 4    4th – 2    5th – 1

Group 3    Points   1st –  7     2nd – 4    3rd – 3    4th – 2    5th – 1 

As we did in our earlier article, we applied this system to the three major contenders for the New Zealand Horse Of The Year title.

The points ended up looking like this.

Stent 182                   Christen Me 138              Adore Me 115

What the addition of extra points to the Grand Circuit races has done is stretch out the gap from the top three to the rest and rewarded those horses that have excelled in the really big races.

We would like to thank everybody for taking the time to email and ring us and we will keep you up to date with any further developments with our promotion of this change to how we select our horse of the year and all the age group winners.

JC