The trotting races Encounter, the first open consultation to imagine the horse races of tomorrow

The Société d’Encouragement à l’élevage du Cheval Français (SECF), also called LeTROT is a non-profit association (law 1901). Its primary mission is to work for the trotting races development in France and the protection of the French Trotter in its specificity.

With the last elections held in 2019, the representatives of the association’s committee wanted to set up a first participative approach, an innovative and differentiating approach, to put the bettor back in the center of horse racing and imagine the horse races of tomorrow.

 

The ambitions of the approach

This first participative approach initiated by Le TROT, in partnership with different actors of horse racing (Equidia, Paris-Turf, Province Courses) has three main highlights:

  • A consultation opens to all to gather the concerns, expectations and proposals of the greatest number of people on the horse races of tomorrow and to build together the future of trotting races.
  • The Pre-Assises bringing together a committee of 30 experts to assess the feedback from the consultation, structure and select the topics to be discussed during the Assises.
  • Les Assises du Trot (Trot Meeting) gathering 165 people at the Enghien racecourse to announce the results, current events, topics for further study, and to draw the future of horse racing.

Period 1: Consultation

LeTROT company chose the Assembl Flash solution to carry out this consultation, intended to collect the concerns, expectations and proposals of the greatest number of people on the horse races of tomorrow, and to collectively build the future of trotting races.

The platform, customized and structured to meet the challenges of massive solicitation, was put online for three weeks in February 2020.

Four themes of participation were proposed to different target populations (players, trainers, drivers, jockeys, breeders, horse owners, volunteers, racing companies and journalists):

  1. The trotting race program
  2. The race (before / during / around)
  3. The offers of games
  4. The race show

A total of 2,154 participants came to share 20,837 contributions.

All of these ideas were instantly sorted, classified and arranged thanks to the semantic analysis technology that Assembl Flash is equipped with. This made it possible, in a very short time, to produce syntheses and cross-thematic analysis in order to better build the Trot’s Assises.

Period 2: Before the event

At the end of the consultation, all the results were submitted to a committee of experts and representatives of the different targets of the consultation.

A day of exchanges and new debates: the objective here is to enable the experts to take ownership of the results, to share their feedback and technical and scientific expertise on the issues at stake in the changes requested, in order to become, themselves, bearers of tomorrow’s horse races.

These pre-meetings will have allowed the identification of subjects that are the object of new pedagogical approaches to explain the functioning and strategies, subjects that are still subject to debate, decisions and announcements on the revival of trotting races during a collective high point, the trotting races Encounter.

Period 3: The Trotting race Encounter

 A strong and mobilizing event was held on 1 July 2020 at the Enghien racecourse, bringing together more than 150 people.

 

 

 

 

On stage, several different experts per theme, a representative of the Institution, the Presidents of the Trot, France Galop and PMU succeeded one another. The public and internet speakers were invited to participate in a question and answer exercise.

Numerous themes were addressed with tracks structuring the future of horse racing and promising announcements. For example, the authorization of geldings at the Grand Prix d’Amérique!

Watch the word of the President of the LeTrot company, Mr Jean-Pierre Barjon:

For Jean-Pierre Barjon, this “extremely innovative approach has enabled us to gather the opinions of all these contributors, of these thousands of people who have shared their recommendations with us. A technology that allowed us to usefully present the results to the experts in order to better understand and analyze them.  When you present the results, you can see that we’ve taken a big step forward.”

You wish to set up a participative approach and collect the concerns, expectations and proposals of the greatest number of people?

 

Contact us!