Over $150k raised for charity as Pogga’s Challenge enters 10th year

Every October, a group of us harness racing devotees turns our attention to a competition established by fellow enthusiast Steve ‘Pogga’ Salter back in 2015.

It is the annual Harness Charity Challenge, which to date has raised over $150,000 for various charities.

Entering its milestone tenth year in just 10 days time, I wanted to reflect on the success of this contest and give enormous kudos to Pogga for putting his hand up to meticulously administer the tipping tournament every October. 

The contest is relatively simple for entrants. We simply nominate a charity to represent, pay a $250 entry fee (all funds are donated to charity at the end of the month) to play, nominate a tip daily via a tweet/post on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), and Pogga does the rest.

He retweets the tips, calculates and publishes a daily leaderboard, and divides the prize pool at the end of the competition to donate to the charities of the winning tipsters.

Back in 2021, Pogga spoke about the establishment of the tip-off. 

“We said let’s make it $250, if we get four people in that’s $100 we can donate to charity. The first year we would have had close to 20-odd people sign up, which was just crazy,” he said. 

“It’s pretty serious money we’re talking about. We’ve got to do this the right way. So we ended up saying let’s tweet every day, let’s have a leaderboard, let’s have everybody have a nominated charity, let’s call out those charities on Twitter and give them a bit of focus. 

“I thought that year would be it, 2015. Here we are six years later, we’ve now raised just over $113,000, just a couple of blokes with an ego trip!” 

In 2021, “Trots Twitter” was still in its halcyon days. That year, a whopping 62 entries contested the Harness Charity Challenge – raising $15,500 that year alone. 

Fast-forward to now, just a handful of years on,  and we’re up over the $150,000 mark. 

Any tweep (that is, I believe, a user of Twitter) who is still around from those heady days of “Trots Twitter” (circa ~2014-2021) understands the platform’s landscape has changed. There simply isn’t the daily engagement that there once was when harness racing would literally trend alongside mainstream sports and topics on major Saturday nights from Melton.

Many of the characters have either disappeared from the platform altogether, or simply stopped posting about harness racing. 

The Harness Charity Challenge, however, has endured this changing landscape.

And I see little reason why this coming month cannot inspire a new wave of trots conversation on Twitter/X, providing those voices that are on the platform get behind Pogga and support this wonderful event. 

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see some new entrants in the Challenge? There are plenty of punters, emerging form analysts, tipsters and commentators that pop up on the feed who would add plenty of interest to this competition. 

Come on, folks, let’s get behind this. Now more than ever the harness world needs love (Rowsey, you’ll appreciate my little musical call out there! 😉) 

As I have done every year since the Challenge’s inception, I’ll be lining up. 

This year I’m playing for Very Special Kids, who “provide holistic palliative care for children, and tailored support for their families”. Enough said. Absolute everyday angels who deserve all the support anyone can afford them.

As for my record in the comp, it pains me to say that I am a long-time maiden. 

I’ve run a handful of placings over the years, earning some pretty good coin for my charities, but I’ve always found a way to get pipped at the post as the Hail Mary tips are coming in thick and fast in the final days of the contest.

Here’s hoping this is my year. 

For the record, champion trainer Andy Gath is one of two multiple winners of the Challenge, taking the title in 2019 and 2023. The other is a team – Ash Tolvent and Harold Parker, who went back-to-back in 2020-21.

Others adorning the illustrious honour roll are Craig Nott (2015), Harvey Kaplan (2016), Brett Coffey (2017), Nick Hooper (2018), and Jayden Brewin (2022). 

Then we have other generous, passionate supporters of the game getting involved, such as @JohnDGhost on Twitter, who has said he’ll chip in $10 for every winner driven by Jimmy Herbertson or Kerryn Manning during October. And if they can win 25 races each, he’ll double it! Great stuff. 

Get involved, folks, and see if you can add your name to the board for 2024. Follow @HarnessCharityChallenge, and if you have any questions, Pogga will be more than happy to answer.

Hoofnote: We’ll have Pogga on for a chat in this week’s Pacesetters Podcast, online Thursday.