October
JulyCups and downs
The Ballarat Cup, a listed race, is now worth $500,000 while the Group 3 Geelong and Bendigo cups are worth $400,000.
All three have increased substantially in value in recent years, but needless to say the narks and naysayers have been out in force anyway.
The fact is that the Geelong and Bendigo races draw substantial benefit from their positioning on the calendar.
Don’t forget, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Bendigo Cup was run after the Flemington carnival. Had the calendar change not occurred, it would never have achieved Group 3 status.
The Geelong Cup’s position enabled it to produce the 2002, 2010 and 2011 Melbourne Cup winners.
If the Ballarat Cup was to stay in its current slot in mid to late November, it needed another boost in order to attract a decent-sized field of quality stayers. Maybe the $500,000 purse will have that effect.
A different solution could be to swap the Ballarat Cup, now over 2000 metres, with the Gold Nugget (1600m), currently run at Ballarat’s September Sunday meeting.
A 2000-metre country feature three weeks before the Cranbourne Cup makes perfect sense, even if the previous day’s Naturalism has to move.
If the Gold Nugget was a $1 million race in November and WA could be persuaded to move its carnival back a couple of weeks, it would make an ideal lead-up to the Railway.
That would allow the WA carnival to flow straight through to Perth Cup day, getting rid of the hiatus it has now. Of course, that would require interstate co-operation, which clearly is too much to ask.
Castlemaine (Vic)