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Letter of the Week

Stick with stamina

The mesmerising Jericho Cup offers a genuine Melbourne answer to the Sydney challenge.
No more tit-for-tat gimmicky add-on races that will take us down a non-sustainable path even faster in an industry that does face challenges with regard to cultural relevancy.
Leave the Melbourne Cup as it is — a 3200-metre handicap. But drastically lift the prizemoney of the Mackinnon Stakes for the final day of the Flemington carnival to attract the superior northern-hemisphere middle-distance champions. Maybe even stretch it out to the classic distance of 2400 metres. 
And lift even further the Cox Plate prizemoney as a natural first bite of the cherry and a lead-in race two weeks earlier to create a real international championship challenge. 
The horses are already flooding in so let’s lift their quality. 
The Jericho is a wonderful spectacle that reaches way back through thoroughbred traditions from all over Europe. 
It is why the thoroughbred evolved as a lean, long-legged, arch-necked animal that can run all day — a far cry from the low-slung, muscled-up bulls from the Hunter Valley. 
Leave the Jericho where it is, at Warrnambool, but why not revamp the Melbourne autumn to have a similar marathon? 
Maybe even rebrand and extend the Australian Cup, or simply invent a new weight-for-age race called the Snowy River Stakes over four miles.  The famous poem was about an ultimate marathon. 
Stay with the stayers and beef up the program. Then we all benefit in Australian racing — Sydney for speed and Melbourne for stamina. The best of both worlds.  
Some people love the quarterhorse-style nature of Sydney programming. So be it. 
Melburnians need to stay to their strength — stamina.
They don’t have to do too much fiddling with the program as it now stands. Just change it intelligently and ethically.

Terry Hartney
Hanoi (Vietnam)
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Friday 29 March
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