Regal Sulkies: The Light Harness Vehicle 4000BC to Present

The world's first two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicles were seen in Mesopotamia early in the third Millennium B.C.. They were fitted with a single pole and yoke and took advantage of the herd instinct of the horse by being always drawn by two animals. The single draught two-wheeler did not appear for more than 2000 years, until the 3rd century B.C. in Han China. Even when ridden horses were first used in warfare (many centuries after they had first been used to pull wheeled vehicles) they were ridden in pairs, the reins of the soldier's horse being held by the squire galloping alongside and holding both his own and the soldier's horse's reins.

Fig. 1 Two views of the Saddlecar of the Ancient Near East. The driver had to stand at any sort of pace over the roads of the era. The two outer animals ("Onagers") were 'spares' and were hitched to the yokes when the first pair tired.

Nothing in human history has pushed technology more rapidly than the life and death struggle of warfare, and so we find the development of the saddlecar and platform car leading to the chariot in the early second Millennium B.C.. With lighter spoked wheels in place of the earlier disc wheels, and carrying one or two persons, the first chariots still required their drivers to control the horses with nose rings, although the first evidence of the use of bits also dates from this period in an area north of the Caucasus. Chariots were typically drawn by two horses, although four were frequently used in military service where the two outer ones functioned mainly as replacements. The horses of this era being considerably smaller than present carriage horses, and of a size that would qualify them as ponies today (12 to 12.5 hands).

Fig. 2 A monument to the carriage builder's art, a light high speed chariot from the early second Millennium BC.

Advances were made in wheel building, with wheels having from four to twelve spokes in evidence at the time. Battle chariots, with their requirement for stronger wheels, typically used six or more spokes in their wheels, while commercial and cult chariots made do with cheaper four spoke wheels. Also during this period we find chariot parts made of heat-bent timber for lightness and strength. The chariot was attached to the horses via the pole, yoke and neck fork. There was no girth strap, and the rearward placing of the axles ensured that about one twelfth of the total vehicle and driver weight bore down on each of the horse's necks. With very light vehicles such as chariots, this positive balance arrangement is both necessary to ensure the neck fork does not lift and put intolerable pressure on the horse's trachea via the throat-strap holding the forks in position, and to put the minimum possible load on the fragile wheels of the era. This minimum wheel loading also contributed significantly to the ability of the chariot to travel over soft surfaces, such as sand.

In the late second Millennium B.C. (1500 - 1000 B.C.) the chariot is seen in widespread use in warfare, hunting and as a fast transport. The "box" in which the driver and occasional passenger stood, was roughly the shape of a capital D, with the axle running along the straight edge of the D and the pole extending from beneath the central portion of the D. A couple of heat-bent timber pieces formed the frame, while the floor was made of a rawhide mesh which bound the parts together and formed a resilient platform. The size of the D was 1.0 metre wide by 0.5 metre front to back. Compared to earlier chariots, those of this period had a wider track and were faster and more stable in turning.

They were also very light. A chariot of this period was rebuilt (in France in 1969) using original materials and techniques, and weighed 34.1 kg, with harness. The Egyptian chariot, pulled by two ponies at the gallop, could achieve speeds of 20 to 25 mph. By comparison, the Regal Apollo - built in the year 2000, but which has a modern independent suspension system - weighs 35 kg, and is fabricated primarily from tubular stainless steel. Drawn by a single pacing horse, the Apollo has covered the mile on a 1000 metre track in just over two minutes (2:01.6). That equals 29.6 mph, faster than a lighter ancient chariot pulled by two or more horses. It has also been found to be very easy to drive, and kinder to the horse than conventional racing or training sulkies.

Control of the horses was much improved by the widespread use of various types of bits, and it was in this period that the Hittites of Anatolia developed one of the most elegant and effective pole and yoke assemblies ever seen. Combined with their three-man chariot and outstanding metal-working skills (they were the first to melt iron - a technique not available in the West until the 14th century), this pole and yoke arrangement enabled the Hittites to dominate their section of the ancient near east for centuries (much as the development of the fighting saddle enabled the citizens of ancient Petra - that 'Rose-red city half as old as time' - to achieve a similar domination in a later era).

Blinkers are also frequently in evidence from this time, and may originally have been used to protect the horse's eyes in warfare. Also in this period, we see the first documented horse races (in chariots) in connection with religious celebrations.

The development of effective mounted cavalry in the last Millennium B.C. meant a marked decline in the chariot's role in military engagements. The last gasp of the military chariot was as a war engine equipped with scythes and armoured turret, and designed to terrify and scatter the enemy - its failure to do so signalling its ultimate decline in the military context. However, around 600 BC, the writings of the Greek lyric poet Sappho, referred to the generally high opinion of the splendid appearance the massed chariots of Lydia (where Croesus once ruled) must have had:

Remembering Anactoria

The fairest sight in all the world some say
is an array of horsemen, and some a host of foot,
And some again the swift oars of our fleet,
But to me 'tis the heart's beloved

Easy it is to make this plain since Helen,
who surpassed in beauty all mortality,
did once forsake her noble husband for Troy.

Fleeing across the water, no thought had she
for child or family remembered
For love had beguiled her . . . gently, as it has me.

Since young ladies have hearts easily persuaded,
light things, given much to passion,
So now I think of Anactoria who has gone from me,

And of whom I would rather the soft sound of her foot-fall,
And the sight of her sparkling eyes, than all the chariots
and charioteers of Lydia in full armor charging.

In the 6th century BC, the Greeks developed both the "dorsal hitch" harness and neutral-balance chariots to go with it. The Greek harness, unlike that of the Egyptians of previous eras, had a girth strap, attached to a saddle behind (instead of in front) of the horses' withers. The girth prevented a lifting force on the saddle causing discomfort to the horse, and thus the chariot could be set at neutral balance, that is, with ZERO weight on the horses.

Dorsal hitch harness and neutral balance gave the Greek chariot greater speed and endurance than its Egyptian predecessors. Pairs sulkies of the modern era (1992-2001) using the dorsal hitch and negative balance, as well as larger (approx 15 hand) horses but restricted to the pacing gait, achieve speeds as high as 31 mph. Of course the later vehicles also have the advantages of pneumatic tyres and ball-bearing hubs. Ball bearings having been invented by Philip Vaughan, and first used on the axles of horse-drawn carriages in the year of their invention, 1749, the same year in which Ben Franklin installed the world's first lightening rod on his own home in Philadelphia.

Chariots were used by both sides in the major battles between Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia, but their role was gradually superseded by mounted horsemen until the chariot was used mainly in races in Greece and Rome, and for high speed communication and religious purposes.

It was only very late in the first Millennium after Christ that iron horseshoes came into common use in Europe (prior to that horses either went barefoot or had their hooves wrapped in cloth).

Around 500 AD the collar was invented for working camels in harness by an unknown inventor in what is now Afghanistan. It took another five hundred years for the horse collar to come into use in Europe, but when it did it massively increased agricultural production, since a horse could plow more than twice as much land in a day as the oxen used previously. However, it has been noted (Weller et al) that the single ("dorsal") hitch used by the Romans was just as capable of pulling heavy loads as the two-shafted hitches we use today.

With the break-up of the Roman Empire, and its more than 50,000 miles of high-speed roads, both the need for, and opportunity to use, high-speed harness vehicles vanished from the Western world. By the time good roads re-appeared in England more than a thousand years later (the horse-drawn coach was introduced to England from Holland in 1564), nobody remembered what a dorsal hitch harness looked like, nor its advantages over later harness designed for slow-speed and heavy haulage in fields and on poor roads.

We pick up the story of the fast two-wheeler in the 19th century. On February 2nd 1829 an American trotting pony named Tom Thumb appeared in England and caused an immediate sensation. It was not the horse so much as the vehicle he used that aroused the interest of observors. According to an English newspaper of the time:

"The match cart is one of the lightest and best constructed we have ever seen. The shafts are of American ash. It is nine feet four inches in length [2.84 metres - a sulky length not seen on a post WWII Australian racing sulky until the advent of the Ireland Special in 1989] and the axle, which is of well tempered iron, is strong and four feet [1.22 m] from linch pin to linch pin [i.e., about identical in outside wheel width to the 1995 Australian minimum racing sulky width regulation of 1.20 metres!]. The wheels are five feet in diameter [1.52 m] and the cart's weight is 108 pounds [49 Kg, or about 30% HEAVIER than a 2-man Egyptian battle chariot and more than twice the weight of a typical modern race sulky]. "The cart was of the type which would have been seen on the track at the first American trotting races held at Union Course, Long Island, in 1823. Prior to that all events were match races which had to take place on the road."

By the 1850s sulky weight had allegedly been reduced to about 32 Kg, and the straight-axle sulky in which Flora Temple set a world record of 2:19.7 (just under 26 mph) is said to have weighed just under 34 Kg, or about the same weight as an Egyptian battle chariot, and achieved about the same speed, albeit with one large horse trotting, rather than two ponies galloping. It should be noted that single-horse sulkies were the world's fastest horse-drawn vehicles in the period 1829 to 1992. The Regal GEMINI team-to-pole sulky was built in 1992, and was the first team-to-pole vehicle to enable harness racers to routinely exceed the previous best speed of the faster of the two horses pulling it. Previous pairs sulkies (1829-1991) did, without exception, produce slower speeds than the previous best of the faster of the two horses pulling them.

To alleviate the problem of horse's hocks hitting the axles, the bent axle sulky was introduced in 1878, and allowed the sulky to be hitched closer to the horse, reducing slew on bends and wind resistance. In the same year, the world's first commercial telephone exchange was started in the U.S.A. (New Haven CT).

In the same year in which the wired-on pneumatic bicycle tyre was invented (1892), it was adapted to the sulky, leading to the inevitable jibes from the technophobes always present in harness racing crowds, and a new world speed record. The new "bike sulkies" were so successful that the high-wheelers were obsolete within twelve months.

While the old high-wheelers and the first bike-wheeled sulkies had leaf-spring suspensions, the later bike sulky abandoned any form of suspension and relied on the pneumatic tyres to provide what little relief was to be had from the jarring caused by rough track surfaces. From early in the 20th century, typical sulkies used to 'work' harness racers also lacked any form of suspension, and were both uncomfortable and dangerous on rough tracks.

The introduction of ever-more efficient suspension systems on automobiles after WWI suggested that sulkies would be safer and more comfortable if they too had an effective suspension system. However, the light and flexible frame (or "chassis") of the sulky proved an insuperable barrier to the creation of a light and effective sulky suspension.

The only known independent suspension system for sulkies made in the southern hemisphere prior to 1960, was Sydney inventor, Les Brown's, ingenious prototype, illustrated in the drawing below. This drawing is based on the only surviving (in 1999) piece of the 1953 Brown sulky, the undercarriage:

Fig. 3 In the above drawing, only the undercarriage is drawn strictly to scale. Les's undercarriage relied for damping on the friction between the greased vertical internal sliding components of the undercarriage forks and their outer casing. The fork's vertical movement was controlled by two coil springs which limited upward movement, while the cups and cross pieces shown above the undercarriage cross member limited downward movement. The total available vertical movement was a little less than an inch (25 mm).

The Brown suspension sulky was used for a time trial on Captain Sandy in 1953. The trial was on the Harold Park (Sydney, Australia) track, and Captain Sandy established a new lifetime best mile rate. Later that year the horse was hitched to a conventional sulky to become the first two-time winner of the Inter Dominion.

Fig. 4 However, despite its effectiveness in enabling horses to reach higher speeds, the Brown undercarriage was insufficiently braced against lateral inertial forces such as those which typically appear during cornering on underbanked turns. Figure 4 above shows - in exaggerated form - the inherent limitation of Brown's invention. It may have been due to this problem that the Brown suspension sulky never went further than the single prototype.

The next attempt at independent suspension was made fifteen years later by another Sydney inventor, Jim Walsh, a year after he joined his father in the sulky building industry in 1967. Illustrated below is a close-up of the suspension system on the nearside wheel of the Walsh prototype:

Fig. 5 A close-up of Walsh's first independent sulky suspension in 1968. With more than double the suspension movement of Les Brown's model; effective lateral wheel stiffness, plus modern dampers, this sulky was much more effective at damping road shock, and was used by Film Australia as a stable camera mount for the filming of the award-winning 1976 short, 'PACE'. However, it was never sold for race use because of the perceived risk of 'wheel locking' with other sulkies in the close and robust racing typical of Australia and New Zealand.

in the mid 1960s the German psychiatrist, Dr Walter Weber, demonstrated that placing the driver's centre of gravity well behind the wheel axle and thereby lifting the weight of the shafts and saddle from the horse, would enable that horse to travel faster.

Not to be outdone, American aerospace engineer Joe King added another ancient twist - the single shaft hitching method of Akaddia - and 'created' the single shaft sulky.

Fig 6 Marvyn Maker drives Brandy Wynblough to victory in the $3,500 Inaugural Pace in 2:06.8. Marvin is in a single shaft King Sulky, whereas the beaten drivers were in conventional all-wood sulkies typical of the 1960s. Thirty years later, the Australian pacer Wenzelle was to cover the mile in 2:06.7, pulling the first high speed chariot built since Roman times.

King's very successful sulky was banned for alleged safety concerns. Undettered, King re-created his high-uplift design with two shafts, and thus was born the "modified" sulky that was to dominate northern hemisphere harness racing until the end of the 20th century.

In 1970 - the year in which the first "Jumbo Jet" went into service across the Atlantic, another American engineer, Edgar Pickard, produced an extraordinarily advanced sulky of hollow laminated timber shafts, automatically adjustable (neutral) balance, and ultra-low weight. However, he only succeeded in proving how unimportant such sophistication can be, when his sulky competed unsuccessfully against the heavier, but negatively balanced, King sulkies.

In the first year in which Joe King's, chrome-moly steel bikes came into common use, the number of 2:00.0 minute miles run in the USA jumped by 300%. That success spelt the end of the conventional all-timber race sulky that had originated with the introduction of pneumatic bicycle tyres and ball bearings in the last decade of the nineteenth century.

All northern hemisphere countries adopted the "modified" King-style sulky and it was generally conceded to be at least a second faster than the old wood bikes. However, since those older short-wide wood bikes were themselves some two seconds faster than Australia's long-narrow wood and steel race sulkies, Australia found itself in the mid 1970s with vehicles a good three seconds behind the pace, and with obsolete harness tracks as well.

It was to address the problem of moribund sulky design that the Walsh father-and-son combination had come up with a radical new sulky made, for the first time in any production sulky, from high strength stainless steel tube - stainless steel having been developed in 1904 by the French scientist Leon Guillet - who surprisingly failed to to note the outstanding corrosion resistance ofhis invention.

When Gordon Campbell was organising the Avis time trial in the late 1970s, he invited the Walsh company to provide one of their new carts to compete with a couple of imported US-made Jerald Modified sulkies. As it happened, the Hawkesbury trials were the first public appearance of the new stainless sulkies, and they finished the day with one world, one Australian and one State record! However, approximately half the field used the American sulkies, and, on average, horses using the American sulkies improved on their previous best by 0.34 seconds more than horses using the new Australian bikes.

Having closed the performance gap by an average 2.66 seconds, the Walsh company went to market with what they called the Time Trial Special, sulkies that were to become the most successful and widely copied Australian sulky design of the 20th century, and which were the foundation upon which the company built the most innovative series of sulky designs of that century.

The Time Trial Special was the first introduction of a radical new sulky design by a leading sulky manufacturer in any country in the 20th century. Traditionally, new designs and new material technologies are introduced by designers and manufacturers from outside the mainstream - as were the bike wheeled sulky, the single shaft sulky and the modified sullky.

A similar situation pertained in the bicycle world. The first mountain bike was displayed at the 1981 New York Bike Show. It's inventors, Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher, were told that it would never catch on, and the concept was instantly rejected by the major bicycle manufacturers. By 1992, about 80% of all bicycles sold in the USA were Mountain Bikes.

By comparison, Walsh's organisation had been the southern hemisphere's largest sulky manufacturer for a decade prior to the Time Trial Special; for two decades before the offset sulky and for two and a half decades before the suspension sulky.

In the early years of the 80s, while the IBM personal computer was being introduced to the world, opposition to the all-metal sulkies was both significant and vociferous. At Sydney's Harold Park on Friday nights some of the old hands would gather around the new carts and voice such profound aphorisms as, "they ought to burn the bloody things!"

However, nothing succeeds like success, and West Australia's less tradition-bound drivers took to the new carts like ducks to water. It was a West Australian horse, Rhett's Law, that first won an Inter Dominion Pacing Final in one of the new carts in 1982. In 1985 the West's Preux Chevalier won, while 1986 saw the Inter go to the horse that was to become the world's top money-earning gelding, and the biggest Australian money-earning harness horse up to that time, Village Kid.

Village Kid used a Time trial Special throughout his long career, and in 1993 time trialled as a 13YO in that same sulky in a life-time record (and new world record for a 13YO) of 1:55.09.

It is a measure of the effectiveness of the new sulkies that, when Village Kid was born, N0 Australian or New Zealand horse had ever gone faster than the time the Kid was to achieve as a 13 year old at the end of his fabulous career.

In December of that year, the 8YO entire Its Motor Power, time-trialled at Moonee Valley in the drop-back version of the Time Trial Special, the DB620, and stopped the clocks in 1:54.3, the fastest time by an 8YO in Australia, and only 1.3 seconds behind the fastest ever mile on that track, Defoe NZ's 1992 time of 1:53.0 - also set in a Regal drop-back sulky.

Fig. 7 A Regal DB620 Drop-Back Race Sulky. Similar in overall design to many northern hemisphere work carts, its lighter weight and negative balance ensured it was dramatically faster.

As good as the Time Trial Specials were, by the mid 1980s neither they nor any other southern hemisphere design had completely closed the performance gap with North American and European sulkies. However, the lessons learnt in a series of time trials in the 1980s enabled Jim Walsh to create his patented OFFSET SULKY. In 1987, when the Apple Macintosh II became the most powerful personal computer in the world, a 2YO gelding named Rowleyalla set out to become the first 2YO to break 2:00.0 on Sydney's small (less than a half mile) and tight Harold Park circuit. With a previous best of 1:59.7 to his credit, the organisers were reasonably confident. To make sure, however, they asked Walsh for the use of one of the new offset sulkies.

Fig. 8 Five World Mile records in the one attempt. Rowleyalla at the old Harold Park track, Sydney, Australia, 1987.

Before a wildly cheering crowd, Rowleyalla stopped the clocks in an incredible 1:55.0; 3.4 seconds under the world record for a 2YO pacing gelding on a half mile track, and, for the first time in the history of harness racing, faster than the existing world mile records for all larger track sizes. It was the greatest margin by which any world record was broken in 1987; a 1,700% improvement on the largest margin by which any world mile record had ever been broken in Australia, and a fitting prelude to Rowleyalla's next world record at Albion Park in 1988, of 1:52.6. It was also the fastest mile by any 2YO in the southern hemisphere in the 20th century.

Using the same sulky in the same year, the 3YO filly Provocative reduced her previous best time by more than six seconds and equalled Nadia Lobell's world record of 1:53.8.

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 U.S.A.. 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.

In the 1990s two "new" sulky designs were introduced in North America, the enormously expensive and ultra-light British-made Astec (conventional layout but made of carbon fibre) and the US-made Blackjack. But by 2001, neither seem to have opened a performance gap nor shown any sign of displacing more conventional designs.

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

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.

It was a spectacular demonstration of the benefits of advanced vehicle design, and was reinforced a day later on the same track when Walsh's revolutionary pairs sulky, the Regal Gemini, made it's debut.

Leading Queensland driver Vic Rassmussen took the Gemini out on the rain-affected Albion Park track, only to have the horses lose their footing on the slippery surface at their first record attempt. However, Vic steadied his pair for a second attempt, and took Activity and Joker is Wild to a new world record for pacing pairs. His time of 2:01.5 was 0.7 seconds under Stanley Dancer's prior record set (in much better conditions) in the USA.

On April 24, 1993, Vic reduced the overall world mile record for pacing pairs to 1:59.0, with a gelding, Caesar Blue, and a mare, Silk Lynn NZ in the bike.

Fig. 11 The 1992 Regal Gemini Pairs Racer. Vic Rassmussen driving out on a wet and windy day for the first world pairs record ever achieved in the southern hemisphere.

The Gemini was a wholly Australian vehicle, and in its success and departure from established precedent, is typical of the golden age of Australian harness racing vehicle design that began with the 1979 Great Avis Pace Against Time at Hawkesbury, New South Wales.

Fig. 12 Harness Racing Legend Stanley Dancer driving 2YO pacing fillies Caterer and Cutlery to a world record in 1989. The sulky is a pre-WWII design.

The earlier still pairs sulky in which Frank Ervin drove 3YO trotters Impish and Sprite Rodney to a new world record at Lexington, in October, 1962.

Fig. 13 Impish and Sprite Rodney trotting to a new world pairs record at Lexington, 1962. Note the positive balance and scaled-down heavy commercial hitching technology

On January 22, 1993, prominent daredevil stuntman, Vince Silvestro, accidentally wrecked the Gemini during a training run at Harold Park. Walsh decided to take the opportunity to scrap the original design and use what was useful from the wreck to make a new and even more efficient vehicle. The design for the new sulky was finished on Australia Day, January 26, and manufacture started the next day. The new cart, renamed the 'Hittite Special' after the ancient race of master charioteers whose pole and yoke design it borrowed (in modified form), was finished on Friday, February 18.

Fig. 14 Two Coins & Star of Indigo crossing the line in an unofficial world record for pacing mares of 1:59.8. Two Coins had a previous best of 2:04, Star of Indigo was a maiden. The sulky is the Hittite Special. Note the change in hitching apparatus.

Fig. 15 The Hittite Special collecting yet another world record, this time that for a half mile track of 2:01.7, at Young, New South Wales, on November 29, 1997. It is the only world mile record of any type ever established at Young. The driver was Ken Smith and the horses Black Baldy (owned by Ken and Sue Smith) and Tambarra Glen (owned by Sue's father).

In January 1995, Walsh was on annual leave at Port Stephens (north of Newcastle, NSW), absent-mindedly playing with a child's construction set, when he came up with the basis of a new form of vehicle suspension which effectively addressed the hitherto insoluble problem of fitting a light independent suspension system to the flexible frame of a racing sulky. Walsh's new design overcame the problem of frame flexing as well as offering a vastly superior ride. He made and photographed a rough model of the concept and, over the next few months, prepared working drawings.

The provisional patent application on the independent suspension sulky was made on April 2, 1997, and the first production sulkies went on sale in November of that year. Since the greatest need for suspension sulkies lies in the training role, where drivers and horses spend some fifty times as many hours as they do in a racing sulky, Walsh decided to first market a training cart version of his 'floating link suspension' and designed the cart as an easily-assembled kit for economical world-wide delivery. The result was the Regal Brumby, the world's first commercially successful light sulky with independent suspension.

The suspension system more than met Walsh's hopes. The bike rode smoothly over what is punishing terrain in a conventional sulky at anything more than a walk. The Koni 'Special D' spring-over shocks, combined with the excellent suspension geometry of the new design gave the sulky unprecedented road-holding at high speed, and Sydney driver Mike Doltoff compared its handling at speed favourably to that of a Mercedes Benz automobile. The new suspension was an obvious candidate for race sulkies, and in 1997, Walsh made a prototype race vehicle and submitted it to the Australian Harness Racing Council for approval. As of May, 2001, no approvals have been gained.

However, the Brumby has been a huge international success, being sold to clients throughout Australia and New Zealand, and in the USA, Canada, Japan, Northern Ireland, Switzerland and Norway. Indeed, it may be the first Australian horse-drawn vehicle ever to have achieved a world-wide reputation for innovation and excellence.

On August 30, 1998, the mares Creedecoor and Miss Juellet were hitched to the Hittite Special and set not only new world pacing mares record of 1:56.8, but also the outright world pairs record (any gait, any track size). Driven by Don Larpent and trained by veterinarian Pene Kirk and Maurie Ryan respectively, their time was 5.4 seconds under the former outright world record set by Stanley Dancer in 1989, and 2.2 seconds under the later record set by Vic Rassmussen in 1993.

On 31 August 1997, Pene Kirk trained two full brothers for her attempt on the world records at the Queensland Harness Racing Expo held at Albion Park. They were the geldings Ruin and Pendragon and were driven by Don Larpent. The pairs set a world record for pacing full brothers of 2:02.1. Later the same day, Pendragon was registered as a trotter and the pair went out again and set a new world record for a mixed gait pair of 2:05.9.

All up, three world mile pairs records have been set in the Gemini, and eight in the Hittitte Special. In terms of world mile records for pairs broken, the Hittite Special is the most successful horse-drawn vehicle ever built.

In February, 2000, the Hittite Special was re-built to include the Floating Link Suspension system.

In January, 2000, Walsh released another radical new vehicle design, the "Millennium Mini", a single-shaft light cart with full independant suspension designed for draught animals in the size range from miniature horses to large dogs. Like the Hittite Special, it uses the dorsal hitch method. In September, 2000, the Mini became the world's first light (less than 50 pounds or 24 Kg) sulky to combine a single shaft chassis, independent suspension and disc brakes.

Also in 2000, Walsh created the world's first high speed communications chariot since about 500AD. Built from stainless steel tube, the Regal Apollo Chariot also features full independent suspension by adjustable hydraulic shocks and progressive rate coil springs. It weighs a mere 35 kg and made its debut in August 2000.

Regal Apollo chariot setting a world record for the mile for a single pacing horse at 2:06.7. This was at the 2000 Brisbane EXPO, held on August 27 at Albion Park Paceway. The driver is Barry Hoare, and the horse Wenzelle. The Apollo is fitted with jog wheels.

In April 2001, behind the pacer Ultra Chic, the Apollo reduced its best mile rate to 2:01.6.