Australians are eager adopters of new sulky technology, but only if it comes from overseas. By comparison, New Zealanders are equally eager adopters of new sulky technology, but ONLY if home-grown.

These unpalatable truths were brought home to the Walsh organisation in the period 1978 to 2001. The New Zealand harness racing authorities banned the use of Walsh's sulkies from 1978 through to 1984 on the grounds that their importation would damage the local sulky manufacturing industry.

When the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Agreement Act (CER) came into force in 1984 - which prevented 'damage to the local industry' being used as an excuse to block imports, the New Zealand Harness Racing Conference insisted that all imported Australian sulkies be tested against the New Zealand Sulky Standards by the New Zealand Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR) IN New Zealand prior to approval being given.

After sending a sulky over for testing, the first thing that the DSIR and Walsh discovered was that there were NO sulky standards in New Zealand. Thus Conference was also using lies as a weapon against imports.

Tested against a similar NZ-made sulky, the DSIR found that the Australian product was better in every parameter measured. It was stronger AND lighter - and of better quality!

Notwithstanding that result, the New Zealand authorities simply continued to bann it without giving a reason. This action was, of course, in breach of the CER Act, and it was only when the authorities were threatened with fines totalling some $1.3 million in 1987 that they relented - temporarily.

By 1987 the NZ sulky manufacturers had managed to bring their products up to the standards of the Australian sulkies, so the New Zealand Harness Racing Conference obeying the law would not have been nearly as damaging for the local manufacturers as it would have been in 1984. Encouraged by Jim Walsh's appearance on prime-time TV calling for Conference's immediate prosecution for breach of S.36 of the NZ Commerce Act, Conference relented and approved the import of Regal's 1987 model Time Trial Special.

But a couple of years later, when Walsh sought approval for his revolutionary Regal Ireland Special, it was banned as "unsuitable" for NZ racing conditions. Meanwhile, New Zealand manufactures sought to reverse-engineer the sulky while avoiding its patents. The task proved beyond them. Despite the CER and more recent Trans-Tasman free trade agreements between Australia and New Zealand, AND the widespread use in Australia of the Ireland Special since that time (horses using the Ireland Special in its first Inter Dominion won the Inter Pacing Final AND all but one other race on the card - giving Walsh the first "clean sweep" of an Inter Dominion of any sulky manufacturer), it remains banned in NZ to this day.

It was also banned for a time in Australia. Approved in April 1989, it was banned Australia-wide in July of the same year.

The Ireland Special is known generically as an "offset" sulky, since the wheels are offset to the outside of the track. This permits the sulky manufacturer to make a shorter and lighter vehicle, with a greater degree of negative balance than would otherwise be possible. The first Walsh offset sulky was used by a 2YO gelding named Rowleyalla, who broke five world mile records in it in a single run at Sydney's Harold Park in 1987. This was more world mile records than the combined total of all other Australian harness horses up to that time. It was also an improvement of 1,700 percent on the best previous margin over a world mile record by any Australian harness horse.

To Australia's internationally successful track designer, Bede W. Ireland, Rowleyalla's success was no more than confirmation of the design revolution that he had been privy to from the beginning. Bede ordered an "Australian Rules" version of the short-wide northern hemisphere offset sulky, and the first prototype was presented to Queensland Chief Steward Darryl Kays in December 1988. Kays asked Walsh to modify his design to reduce the possibility of the exposed right wheel fouling other sulkies in the close racing style favoured by Australian drivers. This was one of those unwritten rules of harness racing which, in practice, only apply to domestic producers.

By contrast, when a single shaft aluminium 'Track Cat' sulky (Made in the USA) with fully exposed wheels on stub axles was imported into West Australia in 1973, the 'West Australian' newspaper reported that the stewards 'saw no reason' why it could not be approved.

It is traditional in Australia for the harness racing authorities to require the local product to meet all manner of written and unwritten rules that manufacturers of imported products may cheerfully ignore. But to meet these rules, Walsh changed the shape of the right shaft and back bend of the offset sulky so that the right wheel lay beneath the extended centreline of the shaft; the right wheel stay was straight (like the left), and the sulky could be handled in the same way as the Regal TP601. Thus modified, Chief Steward Darryl Kays approved the new design in early 1989. Bede's driver, Billy Ryan, won 7 of the first 10 races in which he competed with the new cart, named the 'Ireland Special' in honour of its first buyer, and Walsh naively thought he might soon start to recover some of the development expenses outlaid on the new carts over the years.

The Ireland Special was very successful — far too successful — on the track, and its very success led to concern from conservative forces that drivers might be forced to buy the new sulky to stay competitive. These concerns found their expression in claims that the new type "might" be dangerous; "might" break up in an unknown manner in an accident, and "might" be incompatible with the Australian racing style.

A 1990 fact sheet produced by celebrated race track designer, B.W. Ireland, showing the differences in design between the most prominent sulkies of the day and, incidentally, demonstrating the absurdity of official pronouncements at the time to the effect that the driver of an offset sulky was unable to sit directly behind the horse.

At that time (and unknown to Walsh) Australia's senior harness racing administrators held the collective view that competition in racing should be solely between the horses and their drivers, that no sulky should provide a competitive edge to its users. That singular view was adopted as policy and published in the November, 1991 issue of the Harness Racing News as follows:

"The sulky shall neither by its design or manufacture give to any driver or horse a speed or distance advantage over any other driver or horse using any other sulky."

This policy only applied to sulkies. It did not apply to harness or any other gear, an exception which led many to conclude that the harness racing administration was being somewhat less than even-handed in its policy-making.

However, the offset sulky was clearly in breach of the policy, and so it achieved the ultimate accolade for technological progress in Australian harness racing - it was banned! Not only was it banned, but with the overkill characteristic of the administration of that era, the rules were redrafted to enable the authorities to unilaterally bann any sulky Walsh (or any other manufacturer) had produced in the past, or was likely to produce in the future.

Under the threat of bankruptcy from the application of these rules, Walsh took the hint and his offset sulky to America. In an astounding racing debut at Freehold, New Jersey, on a cold December day in 1990, two of Walsh's offset stainless steel sulkies were entered in nine races, winning seven, with two of those winners running new lifetime best miles, and one the fastest mile of the day. Subsequently, Walsh's innovative sulky became the first non-American design to be produced under license in the "home" of harness racing, the USA. It was also the first production stainless steel sulky made in North America.

In 1992 Regal brand US-made stainless steel sulkies won both the Woodrow Wilson Pace on America's Pastime (1:51.4) and the Little Brown Jug on Fake Left. Both in new record times. Also in 1992, Cam Luck ran the world's fastest mile in a Regal sulky when he stopped the clocks in 1:48.8.

After three years of unrelenting effort by Walsh, Ireland, and the many supporters of the new bikes, the offset sulky was reintroduced in Victoria in early 1992, and the bans lifted Australia-wide on August 17, 1992.

At the reintroduction of the Ireland Special to Albion Park on August 29, 1992, leading reinsman Alan Donohoe had two starts for two wins in the sulky.

His first attempt was with Tony Bermingham's 2YO filly Penny the Pussycat in the Paleface Adios Classic. Not only did Penny become only the second filly to win the Classic, but she set a new lifetime best mile rate, and the season's fastest mile by any 2YO in Australia!

Alan's next starter was the 3YO Grants Law . Also in the 3YO Challenge in an Ireland Special was Almost An Angel , driven by Bob Morley. Grant's Law crossed the line first in a new lifetime best mile, and also the season's fastest mile for a 3YO! Almost An Angel finished second, with a gap of 44 metres to the rest of the field - none of whom were using Ireland Specials.

Five years later, Walsh sought approval of a new racing sulky with independent suspension. Why? Because in vehicles such as autos and bicycles, independent suspension systems had dramatically improved comfort, safety and road-holding, all features of importance to harness racing drivers. Furthermore, the Brumby light training sulky was already in production and had demonstrated conclusively that those features were readily obtainable in a light sulky.

However, on December 14, 1999, the race sulky was banned by controversial NSW Chief Steward, Roger Nebauer. A few days later Walsh wrote to Nebauer, politely seeking an explanation. The letter was never answered.

It is nothing less than astonishing, in a sports-oriented country like Australia, where even our cricketers seek the assistance of mathematicians to refine their cricketing skills (and who lead the cricketing world as a result), that our harness racing administrators remain so utterly Neanderthal in their attitude to technological progress.

World-wide, t he history of harness racing is the history of parallel advancement in breeding, vehicles, training regimes, nutrition, veterinary care and track design. ALL of these are acceptable to the authorities EXCEPT vehicle development!

Why? If it is legitimate to give a horse an edge by training method, nutrition, etc., why not by advances in vehicle design? Of course there is no reason at all. If you look at other sports - yachting and the winged keel, motor sport and tyre design, disc brakes versus drums, carbon fibre chassis components versus aluminium, etc., etc., the history of all of them is a history of technological development.

It has been suggested that a prime reason is the areas of expertise of the administrators themselves. Vanishingly few have been engineers. The decision to ban the offset sulky in Australia was primarily taken by a lawyer, a clerk, and an administrator who had allegedly failed his Leaving Certificate in every subject but music. These three produced the first draft of Australia's Sulky Standard; a document so incompetently drafted that it was judged by independent and expert authorities (in engineering) to be "unusable".

Overwhelmingly, the competence of harness racing's administrators is limited to an understanding of the horses themselves. They usually own horses, often breed and train horses, and are usually good judges of the minutiae of what goes on in a harness race. But history shows they are frequently woefully ignorant of of technology.

Indeed, the banning of the offset sulky is considered by many experienced observers to be simply a case of the authorities banning a technology they did not understand. And there can be no doubt that they did not understand the technology. For many months they claimed that the driver of an offset sulky was unable to sit directly behind his horse - an absurdity which could have been settled by merely watching the sulky in action (Rowleyalla had used an offset sulky to rewrite the record book two years prior to this claim being made). They claimed the sulky might break up in an unpredictable manner in the event of an accident, although its construction was the same as that employed by race sulkies since 1979. They could not grasp the advantages of weight transfer or negative balance, their sentiments running along the lines of "the horse runs best as God intended him to."

The lesson of history is that the only way that Australian harness racing authorities will accept indigenous technology is for it to first succeed overseas. Once it has the all-important imprimatur of foreigners, it can confidently be accepted in Australia. The name for this mind-set is the "cultural cringe", and the sooner the industry unburdens itself of administrators stricken with this contagion, the better off we will all be.

Copyright James S. Walsh