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Letter of the Week

A punt, not a prize

With the magnificent Winx last week ticking over $10 million in earnings, my thoughts turned to the metric of prizemoney as an indicator of racehorse quality.
Clearly the bank is not the perfect measure of a racehorse. Most obviously, Australia’s highest all-time earner is Makybe Diva — a fine thoroughbred, but probably not many people’s idea of our greatest racehorse, even if we limit ourselves to this century.
To my mind Winx has clearly outperformed Makybe Diva already, and yet Winx will need to win the Queen Elizabeth Stakes and a third Cox Plate before she passes the Diva’s $14.5 million.
The reason is simple — in order to attract overseas participation, the Melbourne Cup is worth about twice as much money as its quality could justify.
Meanwhile poor old Black Caviar finished at less than $8 million despite an unblemished record across 25 starts, winning as many Group 1s as Makybe Diva won races.
Now we face another distortion with the introduction of The Everest, whereby preposterously the winner of yet another 1200-metre weight-for-age race will earn 70 per cent of what it has taken Winx 26 starts and 20 wins to achieve.
But should The Everest’s purse really count as prizemoney? After all, only a fraction of it will be put up by the club, industry and sponsors. The majority of the $10 million is not prizemoney at all but the kitty from an elaborate bet among the owners of runners and/or the cashed-up syndicates sponsoring them.

Dale Scott
Cremorne (Vic)
Today's Racing
Thursday 28 March
Friday 29 March
Saturday 30 March