SEÁN Kane from Naul is easily the most travelled of the various drivers competing on the Irish harness racing circuit. Still only 29, he clocked up plenty of air miles in his earliest years with a licence. Seán has worked in Sweden, and won in New Zealand and France. He won an international race in Majorca in 2021.

On March 4th the full-time fireman at Dublin Airport will gain another stamp on his trotting passport - Finland.

As was evident in the crowd at the recent Prix d’Amérique in Paris, the Nordic countries love their harness racing. When you think about it, this is hardly surprising. The Scandinavian winters would hardly be ideal for thoroughbreds.

Coldbloods

The Finn Jarmo Niskanen has emerged as a top trainer at the prestigious Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris. Jarmo and Seán Kane are in regular contact.

Norway, Sweden and Finland and other regions have all got well established American-style raceways with the associated colour, jargon and equipment. Many of their horses have US pedigrees. An unusual slant, unique to northern Europe is that these countries also intersperse their race cards with races confined to locally bred ‘coldbloods’. The coldbloods have a regulated studbook and the most successful have fan clubs to rival Desert Orchid or the doyen of French trotters, the great Bold Eagle.

The coldblood is best described as a cob type, with decent bone but not a lot of feather. The breed generally possesses a high knee action and can trot fast over distances of a mile and further. The colours are solid and do not include piebald or skewbald. They are not as fine as a standardbred but look like they could pull a freight train.

Leading Irish driver John Richardson drove in a coldblood race in Norway in 2018 and was very witty when he recalled that his borrowed horse kept showing the white of his eye, which is not an admired characteristic in these parts!

Lapland

Whatever about the background, and the qualities of the local breed, Seán Kane has been invited to drive in the Arctic Challenge 2023. Rovaniemi, where the track is situated, is also the capital of Lapland. The venue is four miles south of the Arctic Circle and as such would be a great sponsorship opportunity for any manufacturers of equestrian clothing or colours etc., as Seán told The Irish Field that the attire he usually wears at Portmarnock will hardly be warm enough.

Event manager Tapio Hoikka told The Irish Field: “We’ve been running the Arctic Challenge since 2019. In 2021, ‘The Belgian Devil’ Jos Verbeeck, was our star attraction but the event was in December and the temperature was -25° celsius, so this year we are trying March when it will be a bit warmer’’ (Note: a balmy -9° celsius at time of writing!).

Tapio continued: ‘’Our greatest coup was in 2019 when the American driver Tim Tetrick won a leg with a Coldblood called Pikku-Ryti. This year there are only two legs in the competition, both of which are for standardbreds. However, I am trying to get Seán a catch drive on a coldblood.”

Trophy

In previous years eight locals have competed with four invited foreign drivers. Unsurprisingly, the locals have won the four renewals since 2019 with Santtu Raitala victorious in 2021 and 2022. Covid-19 knocked out a year and the next year Jos Verbeeck had to drive in front of empty stands. Given Seán Kane’s fierce will to win, he will be keen to get the first ‘IRE’ engraved on their trophy.

Seán told The Irish Field: ‘’This will be another chance to put Ireland on the map. The organisers even said in the advance publicity that Ireland is not an obvious trotting nation so it would be nice to make a mark. I will be driving against the top Finns and also the Swedes Daniel Rèden and Orjan Kihlström and Yannick Briand of France.”

As a five-time winner of the ‘trotters only’ division of the IHRA drivers’ championship, Seán should do this country proud – although he is an unknown quantity on snow!