July
MayGo national
Troy Corstens asks how Australian racing would look if we started again from scratch (Richo, 25/7).
Surely there would be one obvious difference.
If we were starting from scratch, building a sport/industry fit for purpose in the 21st century, we would get rid of the system where, by an accident of history, racing is governed by not one administrative body but seven.
Of all the major sports on the Australian landscape, why is racing the only one to retain its governance structure from colonial days?
Even the crusty old British have a single peak body, the British Horseracing Authority, to administer the sport there.
The word “authority” is key in the organisation’s name. We have something called Racing Australia, but it’s a toothless tiger with no authority whatsoever.
What do we get with six states and a territory each running their own racing? We get the whales swallowing the minnows, sponsorship/wagering deals flogged off piecemeal at cut prices, a black-type committee that hasn’t met or made a decision in eight years …
Remember that time a jockey got suspended in Hong Kong yet could ride in NSW -- but nowhere else in Australia?
And then there’s the mad programming that sees the Australian Guineas and Randwick Guineas run a week apart (if not actually on the same day), the Golden Eagle cannibalising the Cox Plate field, the Spring Champion the week before the Victoria Derby.
I could go on.
Sadly, as has been noted on this page previously, there is Buckley’s chance of rationalisation while the major parties federally seem to regard racing as a minor embarrassment about which the less said, the better. Apart, of course, from the Greens, who do have a policy on racing -- i.e., to abolish it.
Cremorne (Vic)