MELBOURNE, Australia -- Some day, in the middle of the Australian outback, they'll run a horse race down a straight, two-kilometer track. The only sound will be that of the horses' hooves pounding toward the finish line.
There won't be any betting windows, or food, or beer. There won't be any grandstand, either, because there won't be any fans.
And the only way to check out the action will be via the Web.
See also: TV Goes to the Races- - - - - -
"The existing racing is spectator-based racing. Ours is a home delivery event," said John Hodgman, whose vision this is. He's the founder of TeleTrak, the company that plans to change the Sport of Kings.
Hodgman, who refers to himself as the company's communications manager, came up with the idea in 1995. While working in sports television production, he noticed the difficulties of recording horse racing.
"Horses were a couple of miles away from the camera," he explained. "At times they looked like a herd of stampeding squirrels."
The main obstacle in using close-up cameras is the curved track. Recording in the stretch isn't a problem, but once the horses head into a turn, the camera has a hard time following the action and distortion becomes a problem.
Hodgman figured the only way to transmit all the action faithfully was to build a long straight-away with parallel and overhead cameras moving with the racers the full distance. He cited the groundbreaking coverage of the 100-meter sprint in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, which used a rail-mounted parallel camera, as an example of what he has in mind.
Because a straight two-kilometer (just over one mile) track isn't conducive to spectators, and the clean, straight track images are perfect for digital compression, Hodgman decided that the Internet was the best place to watch the race.
The enterprising Aussie wants to build three separate tracks for thoroughbred, greyhound, and harness racing. They would be located in rural areas, where land is still plentiful and cheap. Hodgman would raise the A$25 million (approximately US$17 million) for each track, he says, by selling public shares in the company and solicitng private investors.
While Hodgman sees spectator-less horse racing as the future of the sport, his detractors aren't so hot to trot. Three Australian states -- Tasmania, New South Wales, and Victoria -- rejected his proposal outright.
He finally found the state of South Australia willing to cooperate, and assuming that the necessary legislation passes, he hopes to be up and racing by November 2000. Meanwhile, he blames Australia's powerful racing lobby for delaying his plans.
"What we are about is change," Hodgman said. "Racing has been controlled by establishment forces for 150 years, and they prevailed upon government to stop this new form of world-wide racing, because they think it might endanger their own product."
The establishment, however, doesn't appear to view TeleTrak as much of a threat.
"For us in the established industry, it's just a nonsense," said Terry Clifton, media manager for Racing Victoria, one of the country's largest racing organizations.
"Sounds like a bit of a con to us. They need to get the people to invest something like 20 million per track ... and the chances of it ever actually coming to fruition are so remote that it defies logic. We haven't heard a reasonable argument from anyone for how it could possibly work."
Clifton also questioned the availability of betting funds. Although TeleTrak currently plans to have bets placed from prepaid accounts, they will need totalizators -- also known as parimutuels -- companies that handle off-track betting. Clifton feels Australia's totalizators, all heavily involved with the current system, will shy away.
"I'm pretty certain that none of the totalizators in Australia would operate with [TeleTrak]," he said.
Hodgman, not surprisingly, disagrees. Considering the international nature of the project, he feels tenderers around the globe will be chomping at the bit to fill the three separate bookmaker spots to be available on the site, which has yet to launch.
"They're desperate for gambling outlets. They'll chase us," he said.
The hospitality industry, however, won't be lining up at the gate for TeleTrak's business. While Hodgman appreciates the "pomp and ceremony" of a day at the races, he feels public access has no place in his plans. Even if there was a logical way to organize seating along the stretches, the tracks will be located in highly remote areas, making it tough to fill seats.
"In a township with 4,000 people, even if everyone of them went, you wouldn't get enough revenue from them to pay for the grandstand," he said.
Others feel this social element is fundamental to horse racing, and that the lack of it will doom Hodgman's project.
"People go to race tracks to socialize, to have meals, to talk with their mates over a beer and the TeleTrak removes all that," said professor Jan McMillen, executive director of the Australian Institute for Gambling Research at the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur.
"We're at the stage where market forces are really pushing the boundaries of gambling in Australia. We're a gambling nation, we've always accepted gambling as a part of normal recreation, but the understanding has always been that gambling should produce some sort of community benefit. This proposal is purely commercial profit."
McMillen also takes issue with Hodgman's claim that TeleTrak would create hundreds of jobs. "What you will get, maybe, would be some expansion of auxiliary industries with stock breeding and veterinary services, but that's a fairly small proportion of jobs in the industry," she said.
McMillen also questioned the fact that TeleTrak would use second-string horses in its races.
"It's going to involve horses of inferior quality, and we're not so sure that's good for racing as a whole," she said. "I think there's the potential for uninformed betters to be attracted to the betting options without really understanding they're betting on an inferior set of horses."
Hodgman, however, doesn't think this will make a difference.
"The Kentucky Derby-type horses won't race at TeleTrak," he agreed. "We'll have a lower grade of horse, but that's not to suggest it's inferior racing. As long as you have all slow horses, they all cross the line together."
