KEY POINTS:
Colour confusion will become a thing of the past from tonight.
The Auckland Trotting Club is taking the first step by a New Zealand racing club to bring our racing in line with other major tracks around the world by phasing out the use of two of more sets of the same colours in races.
The move is being instigated to make Alexandra Park's racing product more attractive to overseas viewers, who never have to see two sets of the same colours in a harness race.
In North America and Europe all harness horses compete in the driver's colours, while in Australia trainers can only have one horse per race in their colours on metropolitan tracks.
Alexandra Park harness racing is beamed into Australia already and plans are afoot to broadcast the races into South Africa, Europe and North America.
The one set per race rule will also help domestic racing fans tell horses apart, which hasn't always been easy at Alexandra Park where up to six horses a race have worn the same colours with only different coloured caps, often not advertised before the race, to distinguish them.
But the new system still gives trainers the power to decide who will wear their colours. If a trainer has two of more horses in a race they get to choose which one wears the stable's main colours.
And with many trainers having two sets of registered colours, only three horses tonight will actually race in the colours provided by the club.
ATC president Sid Holloway said the move was important as the club eyed overseas expansion.
"Our racing has to keep up with the rest of the world if we want to compete in their markets, which could have huge long-term financial benefits for the industry," said Holloway.
But he says the club respects and supports trainers' rights to have their own colours, so they will not support having driver's colours brought in to New Zealand.
"We have some iconic colours at Alexandra Park associated with some great trainers and we would never want to lose those, but this change means we won't ever have to consider that.
"All of our trainers will still have their colours on show, but with one small change we are making the horses easier to tell apart."
And purists will get an unlikely bonus from the change tonight, with Baltic Warrior in race two wearing trainer Richard Brosnan's second set of colours.
The gold and brown silks, rarely seen at Alexandra Park, are the set No Response wore in her epic 1979 Interdominion Trotting victory.
