No, I'm not in the wrong forum.
Yesterday's Racing Post carried a piece on the running of two harness events after the main galloper card at Chelmsford last Thursday. They weren't bad races either with the 2016 trotter of the year SULKY DU BEQUIN, driven by one John Foy, foiling a gamble on the Irish raider TWIST DU LAYON. There were apparently quite a few Irish people who travelled over for the races.
There are currently four all weather tracks with floodlights in the UK - Newcastle, Wolverhampton, Chelmsford and Kempton along with Dundalk in Ireland and the argument seems to be that since not all of these tracks can be used constantly for galloping there is a potentially lucrative use for them as harness venues in the evening.
The Chairman at Chelmsford, Joe Scanlon, who is a big part of the Betfred operation, was instrumental in getting these races to happen and is keen for all-harness cards to be a regular part of the Chelmsford scene.
Getting harness to catch on with the British betting public won't be easy but given that, especially in parts of London, there are a lot more punters coming from European countries which have a much stronger tradition of harness racing.
I could see harness racing working well at both Kempton and Chelmsford to be honest.
The season over here runs during the summer only but I don't see why winter harness racing couldn't work at the floodlit all weather tracks:
http://www.bhrc.org.uk/racing/
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