Trainer Corne Spies’ and his son Xander have come up with a groundbreaking new way of getting involved in horseracing through a monthly subscription, reports TURF TALK.

Green Lightning Racing is intended to make it easier and more affordable for fans to be immediately involved, enabling them to encounter what the “ownership experience” is in the sport of horse racing.

Xander, who is a qualified lawyer and current director of the Racehorse Owners Association, can’t shake off his love for horseracing and explained, “Young people are interested in horseracing, but just don’t know how to access it and are unsure how to partake in it. So what I generally do is I invite a bunch of friends and show them what racing is about, teach them how to have a bet, teach them how to read form, take them down to the track to hear the horses running on the ground not far away, it’s an experience in itself and it kind of gets people hooked to the extent that they constantly asking me when are we going racing again.

"So I believe if you start at grass roots level one can really rebuild and rejuvenate racing to a certain extent, but it is a multi-faceted effort and it needs to come from every part of the industry and this is one of the reasons I took on the opportunity to formulate this new concept. We began thinking how can we make racing more accessible to the general racing public, to people who are passionate about horses, who enjoy watching horses and not only enjoy the betting side, but actually follow the horses as if they are sports stars and the jockeys as well to a certain extent. In SA’s past we have had horses like Wolf Power, Igugu, Horse Chestnut … people remember those horse’s names with reverence and fondness.

"So we thought why don’t we start an idea that is based on a sports team and that is where the logo we use comes from, it borrows from American sports teams as it stands out and becomes recognisable. So we then formed a concept called Green Lightning whereby we want to give involvement to the racing public in a way that is new and fresh and that hasn’t been tested before.”

Corne said the concept had similarities to the huge syndicates in Australia and America etc that gave an an opportunity to those who could not normally afford it to be able to experience racing from an insider point of view.

However, there is one big difference.

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