Month: March 2019

by Brian de Lore
Published 21 March 2019

Racing Minister Winston Peters can take a considerable amount of self-satisfaction in the knowledge that the man he appointed to review New Zealand racing almost a year ago has just been awarded the most coveted accolade in world racing.

John Messara AM was this week named as the 2019 recipient of the prestigious Longines and IFHA International Award of Merit which recognises distinguished horsemen and horsewomen for lifelong contributions to thoroughbred racing. The Award which was inaugurated in 2013 is an order to honour public figures for their outstanding contribution to the world of horse racing.

The award is both affirmation of the esteem in which Messara is held worldwide and testimony to Racing Minister Winston Peters erudite decision to engage him to review the New Zealand Racing Industry.

Messara will be honored during a ceremony in Sydney on Thursday, 11 April, in advance of the $4 million Gr. 1 Longines Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick the following Saturday in which Winx is scheduled to contest the race as the final start of her stellar career.

“It’s an honour to receive recognition from one’s international peers,” Messara told The Informant this week. “My involvement in the industry has been a labour of love.”

The Award concept between Swiss watchmaker Longines and the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA) was conjointly created in 2013 to honour public figures for their outstanding contribution to the world of horse racing

Messara is the first Australian and only the second person from the Southern Hemisphere to receive the award. Previous winners include the Magnier family and trainer Aidan O’Brien, the driving forces behind Coolmore and the Ballydoyle Racing Stable in Ireland, legendary Japanese jockey Yutaka Take and, the Romanet family who are long-renowned leaders in both the French and international world of horseracing.

Leading Irish trainer Jim Bolger was also a recipient as well as owner-breeder Alec Head – the past champion trainer and patriarch of prominent stud farm Haras du Quesnay. Seth Hancock of historic Claiborne Farm in America won it as did the late Marcel Zarour Atanacio, former chairman of the South American organization for the promotion of Thoroughbreds (OSAF).

It’s a star-studded list of previous recipients, but Messara is a worthy winner after so many crowning achievements in Australia over some 35 years from which he is identified as the single person most responsible for elevating the Australian industry to its current high standing in the thoroughbred world.

The greatest Messara achievement was taking prizemoney levels in NSW from $118 million to $203 million per annum during his five years as Chairman of Racing NSW. But his long career as an administrator has seen him overhaul taxation, integrity, governance, initiate and attract investment for infrastructure and industry modernisation, and the creation of The Championships which has reinvigorated the Sydney Autumn Carnival.

Messara made huge inroads in raising the ethics of the racing industry. He made substantial improvements in the areas of surveillance, drug detection, information sharing with Australian Crime Commission, introducing funding for detection of gene doping, a total ban on anabolic steroids and overhauling the rules including the introduction of the secret commissions rule.

He was also the Chairman of Racing Australia for three years from 2014 and in 2008 was awarded the honour of a Member of the Order of Australia.

by Brian de Lore
Published 21 March 2019

Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) Chairperson Dean McKenzie wasn’t singing the famous Bob Dylan tune, ‘The times, they are a changin,’ but that was the message conveyed when McKenzie spoke openly about MAC for the first time since its establishment in December.

MAC delivered its interim report to Minister Peters on schedule on February 28^th, and the Minister was impressed, saying last week, “The government wishes to acknowledge the excellent work of the panel so far and for its productive interactions with the racing industry and government officials.”

The Terms of Reference under which MAC was formed and has operated did not allow for any communication with the industry stakeholders during the process of compiling its list of prioritised Messara recommendations.

This racing industry, however, has been kept in the dark for years by administrations that were supposed to do the opposite – the stakeholders are accustomed to that treatment. Lack of communication has been the order of the millennium but is rivalled now by the ever-widening gap of costs of to the owner against potential returns.

If we took a very pragmatic and cynical view of the plight of racing people in this country, we might say that despite all the big salaries and all the meetings that were ever convened to solve the problems, nothing has improved one iota.  The end to another racing season looms fast without any tangible improvements in place upon which we can hang our hats.

That’s not the fault of MAC which formed only in December. The Minister and his newish committee called are not responsible for this industry’s ills of the past, but will they undoubtedly will be responsible for the make or break of the future.

McKenzie understands the industry frustration and may have sought Ministerial approval before breaking the previous protocol of silence to talk to The Informant last week. He began, “This is a climate for change, and it’s happening. I know it won’t be fast enough for some, but this is major reform, and you don’t do major reform in a few short months.

“There’s a lot that’s happened; a lot of work has been done, and we have made very good progress, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

McKenzie was referring to the limited time between the formation of MAC and the delivery of the interim report at the end of last month. That period transversed Christmas and New Year, but McKenzie made no secret of the inordinate amount of time and effort put in by the five-person committee to deliver a report that will serve the industry to its best advantage.

“Even though the process has been going for some time without any information released, it’s at a very positive stage as we move forward to the remaining stages to complete the process,” said McKenzie

“The next step is for Cabinet to approve both the interim report and the advice from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). The interim report will not be released at this point of time, but a further announcement on the next steps will be made following Cabinet decision-making in the coming weeks.

“This is likely to set out a busy legislative calendar and the establishment of a transitional racing authority (RITA) as previously indicated in the ‘Terms of Reference.’”

McKenzie’s awareness that the racing industry has been incredibly frustrated by a lack of information to stakeholders made him keen to explain further:

“Up until the end of February when we handed the report in, we had met on five separate occasions as a full committee excluding our meeting on the day we first met the Minister,” he said. “That was from the middle of December, and effectively we had 77 days to complete the interim report which included Christmas and New Year holidays.

“That excludes any sub-committee meetings or other meetings involving some individual members of the committee. Quite early in the piece, we had engaged with the codes and  NZRB with Sport NZ, and we have continued to liaise with all those bodies from the middle of January.

“Over Christmas and New Year our small team put together the first set of papers for a January 6^th and 7^th meeting – a Sunday and Monday. Then we met again two weeks after that, and then three weeks later again; that was the full MAC but also during that time there were various sub-meetings set up to get all the other work underway and get it done in time.

“As per our Terms of Reference, we had two milestones to achieve; one being the end of February with the interim report and the other still to be done with the end of June being the deadline for the final report.

“Our workload has been constant through that period, and the work delivered in the interim report doesn’t stop at that point. If you read the Terms of Reference, it keeps coming back to things we have to do ongoing – work plans and identifying roadblocks and procedures. There’s a work plan for the issues, and the interim report, when released, will show both what we have done and what is coming up.

“We have a schedule of various tasks at different time points, and in the interim report, we had to show the minister how each of those work-streams were to be implemented by the 30^th June and in some instances after that date.”

McKenzie couldn’t give out the details of the work completed by MAC but once approved at Cabinet level the interim report will be released. Also to be released at some point will be the submissions on the Messara Report which have influenced MAC’s work after all submissions were thoroughly analysed.

“In the time available,” continued McKenzie, “we could only genuinely engage with the industry wider public on the Messara recommendations in two ways. The first was consulting with all three codes and NZRB with Sport NZ separately at an early meeting, and the second was through the nearly 1700 submissions.

McKenzie älso said that MAC quickly developed and has maintained an excellent working relationship with both the Minister’s office and the DIA.  And having a small but highly experienced team in New Zealand racing assisting MAC was instrumental in meeting the tight deadline.

Where is all this taking us, you may well ask? The answer lies in the Minister’s original plan to leave the racing industry with legislation that will still be in place 30 years hence and serving racing well – unlike the Racing Act of 2003.

That’s why Peters stopped the original racefields legislation going through about 18 months ago. If it was not going to serve racing well and give it the desired result, why proceed?. Peters knew not to send it through parliament when he found to be a poorly written document. Eventually, it would have ended up on the same scrap heap as the Racing Act of 2003, and ominously the new FOB website may potentially provide the scrapheap with a trifecta.

MAC was set up to prioritise the Messara Report because it’s still the blueprint for change. Part One of the report talks about structure, finances, and legislation. If you are restructuring properly and starting from a blank sheet of paper as Messara once said, then a very wide broom needs to go through all three codes as well as NZRB –a prediction to dwell on.

“The racing industry can be assured that this government is highly motivated to deliver reform and revenue to the three codes,” said Minister Peters last week. He also made a similar statement when campaigning for the last election and this industry is keen for him to deliver.

Peters talks about revenue, and that’s what racing needs in mountain-like proportions for stake money. The FOB isn’t shaping up as the silver bullet NZRB said it would and, revenue of the magnitude required must surely come from maximising income through outsourcing the TAB and cutting costs with a frugal administrative structure.

Reform will come with new legislation, and MAC is playing its part in furtherïng that cause.  Last week the Minister said, “MAC has produced an interim report which reflects the submissions from the racing industry which establishes options at technical, legal, financial and process-orientated steps to be taken.”

It seems clear from that statement the Minister is pleased with everything MAC has achieved thus far. And equally, McKenzie displayed both optimism and lots of confidence in Peters when he stated, “The Minister is an engaging person who is passionate about reforming racing.”

The industry waits as it has done before – perhaps not now holding its breath, but in McKenzie the action is aplenty, and hope springs eternal.

by Brian de Lore
Published 14 March 2019

Racing Minister Winston Peters phoned The Informant this week to provide an update on the progress of the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) recommendations but then said he wasn’t able to discuss MAC’s prioritised list in any detail.

Admittedly, the writer does not receive the Minister’s phone calls with random regularity – less so in recent times; it now requires a lot of text prompting to an extremely busy Deputy Prime Minister who holds four Ministerial portfolios including Foreign Affairs, is often acting PM and is busier than the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger. 

But what we have developed is an understanding that at the appropriate time we can communicate and subsequently deliver a message to racing’s stakeholders which is a pipeline for information that appears lacking from both NZTR or NZRB. When do either of those organisations communicate to the stakeholders the progress made at government level by quoting the Minister?

Are not people employed specifically for that role – government liaison – and haven’t they a duty to keep stakeholders up with the play in important industry matters – it doesn’t happen for whatever unknown reason.

The Minister read a prepared statement over the phone from which he said, “On the 28th of February, I received from the MAC the guiding next steps on racing industry reform based on the John Messara Review. MAC has produced an interim report which reflects submissions from the racing industry and establishes the options for clinical, legal, process orientated and the financial steps to be taken – and that’s where things are now.

“We acknowledge the excellent work of that panel so far, with a very productive interaction with the racing industry and government officials. Our next step is for cabinet to make decisions based on the interim report and advice from the DIA.”

Apart from Winston’s familiar dulcet tones, it didn’t sound like Peters talking. It was the first time in all our phone conversations that he had read something from a prepared statement which reminded me of a quote from the USA lawyer and statesman Dean Acheson who once said, “A prepared statement is not written to inform the reader but to protect the writer.”

Suspecting then, the Minister was following the advice given by his office of bureaucratic sidekicks led by his Chief-of-Staff and political scientist John Johanssen; I decided my best strategy was to fire at him a rapid series of curly questions.

‘What about RITA and what about the legislation,’ was fired at the Minister with a machine-gun-like approach but his interjection came with raucous laughter while saying, “You’ve prepared the whole damn steeplechase course for me, and I’ve only just arrived at the first hurdle.”

At that point, it was the interrogator who had fallen at the first jump. But one questions that resonated was, ‘how can MAC make any recommendations for change without knowing the true financial state of the industry – surely the first move must be to instigate the Performance and Efficiency Audit as demanded this year under the current Racing Act of 2003’?

NZRB has taken the industry into an unknown state of disrepair. No one knows the true current financial state of the racing and until a thorough and unbiased audit is completed that information will remain hidden. Unless you know how much money is in the bank or the level of debt that’s accrued, how can any business decide on its strategy for the future?

“There’s two ways of looking at the industry,” responded Peters, “and that’s with what’s there now and what’s prospected into the future. With things unchanged, this industry is in serious trouble. I’m looking at where things are now and where they have to go to, and the budgetary bits for the May budget are based on those factors plus other alternatives and policies we have such as all-weather racing and that sort of thing.”

But a suggestion to the Minister that the all-weather tracks were nothing more than a distraction to the real issues facing the industry appeared not to be heard.

“We have said to three areas in the country that we would welcome applications,”  continued Peters, “based on their thorough due diligence and research into what is required based on differences in climate and other anomalies and we have said to them – we’ve done the hardest part – we have gone and got the industry the money.

“All-weather has a mixed history internationally, and the utmost caution in making the right choice is critical, but that doesn’t mean we should put off making a choice.

“It’s very important that the due diligence and research is put in, and we have a number of international experts that will be of help to us on the finality of the decisions on those issues.”

 “The MAC report won’t be published or released at this point because it requires cabinet decisions,” Peters continued, “but I’ve got the statutory opening for the legislation – that is all organised. Further announcements will be made following the cabinet decision on these matters in the coming weeks. The matter of cabinet decision making is imminent.”

So, what about the legislation being done and dusted by the end of June. Is that still on track, was the next question for the Minister?

“Yes,” replied Peters after a some hesitation, “but with qualification. You never know what will come out of left field in terms of the whole agenda, but it’s on track as we speak.”

Peters agreed there would be some comfort for the stakeholders knowing that the writing of the legislation is well-advanced, and agreed that message should be conveyed to the industry.

When suggested to him that the TAB has failed to increase its customer numbers sufficiently, as claimed they would, and that total TAB turnover was down since the FOB platform went live January 4^th, he replied, “The TAB is down about 4.1 per cent I believe without having the figures in front of me. There could be a range of reasons for that and one could be the novelty and newness of the system but we will know shortly, before too long, whether that’s a fact or not.”

But being a follower of the TAB figures it is prudent to report that in the first 54 days of betting in 2019 up to February 27^th, turnover for that period is down $18.15 million compared to the same period last year – that is for betting on horses and greyhounds but doesn’t not include sports betting.

For those 54 days in 2018, the turnover was $266,727,693 compared to $248,577,542 for 2019 – a decline of 6.8 per cent. If sports betting has risen on last year’s figures, it may account for the Minister’s lesser quoted figure of just a 4.1 per cent decline.

However analysed,  the turnover compared to last year has fallen and no industry prospers on a decreasing revenue. When suggested to the Minister the NZRB would be unlikely to meet its budget in the current financial year and the present worry of the industry was that the minimum stake may have to decrease, he sounded less perturbed.

“I know what their concern is,” replied the Minister, “but the fact is that for Saturday racing we have a much higher figure projected for stakes that we are setting out to achieve and we are not taking our eyes off that prize – $50,000 minimum a race. That’s where we seek to go.”

by Brian de Lore
7th March 2019

Traditionalists will be hating it but the new generation of Australian racegoers are loving it, as the long-feuding state versus state stakes rivalry takes more twists and turns than a post-earthquake Christchurch to Picton train journey.

This long-standing feud goes back more than 50 years, but with Australian racing more international today than ever before, the intensity of the stakes war has heightened in the past year to the point where the accusation is now about it undermining Australia’s pattern racing.

Australian racing has taken a big leap forward over a long period in the eyes of the internationals. It started way back in the late 1970’s with Robert Sangster and Swettenham Stud and then reached a new level when Vintage Crop become the first northern hemisphere visitor to come south and win the Melbourne Cup of 1993.

The willingness of state governments to support racing, a change in the tax regime to benefit breeders, the shuttling of international stallions which worked sensationally in the upgrading of pedigrees, and the ever-increasing presence of international breeders and racing syndicates has seen Australian racing transform over the past 40 years.

Even before that, racing in Australia was always of a very high standard, and had a great history, and was a sport or pastime well-suited to the Australian psyche of being willing to bet on anything including the fabled ‘two flies crawling up a wall’ with the resulting nonchalant catch-cry of ‘she’ll be right, mate.’

The propensity of the population to bet combined with the inherited traditions of the old country has seen Australia establish an enviable history of racing over the past 150 years. That tradition is indelibly felt in the atmosphere that pervades historic courses like Flemington and Randwick on the big race days.

And from that history has evolved pattern racing which is the very foundation upon which the system operates.  It determines every good horse’s level from the division of the also-rans, the status of the races divided into group and listed, the allocation of prizemoney to those races, the venues and dates for where and when they run, and how everything fits not just into a domestic racing calendar but in more recent times an international one.

The evolved pattern system establishes every level of achievement and is what encourages breeders to breed the best to best, before hoping for the best. Today the traditionalists are fighting to protect it.  Racing is taking on a new persona now a new generation of under-35 Australians are voting with their feet and saying the excitement of the event is what matters.

The movement is both fuelled and led by Racing NSW CEO Peter Vlandys who was recently quoted as saying, “Racing has been built on tradition; does it have a place in modern Australian racing?”

We don’t think about tradition in Australian racing being to forefront of its future decision-making, but deep in the heart of Australia’s oldest racing clubs, tradition is one of the strongest elements present and is at the very core of its pattern racing.

So, the advent of The Everest in October 2017 was like a dagger through hearts of the very staunch traditionalists. But commercially it was a resounding success, and the whole racing world stopped and focused on one sprint race for $10 million.

What The Everest didn’t do so much was interfere with the pattern races and most of the horses contesting the race were still able to relocate to Melbourne and run in the major sprint races such as the winner Redzel who went on and won the Darley Classic at Flemington in Cup Week.

“The Everest is the highest turnover race of any race we have ever had in NSW,” Vlandys told Racing.com recently referring to the 2018 running, “and 82 per cent of the people that came to it were under 35 so they are definitely interested in wagering – they are our future customer.”

But this Racing.com interrogation of Vlandys, who wasn’t taking a backstep on any of the NSW initiatives, had him more under fire for his promotion of the Golden Eagle which is a $7.5 million race for four-year-olds over 1500 metres at set-weight conditions scheduled to be run the same day as Victoria Derby Day at Flemington on November 2^nd.

On that same card, Racing Victoria also run the $1 million Gr. 1 Kennedy Mile. When questioned about the undermining of pattern racing, Vlandys responded, “Just because there’s a pattern there, who’s to say it should stifle any innovation. What’s good about these new events is that the younger generation do embrace them. It’s their event; they don’t care about tradition. They care about a product that they can engage in, and we are giving them that product. We are focused on a 20-year plan, not just a two to three-year plan – to have customers 20 years down the track.”

When the announcement of $5 million All-Star Mile came, which will debut at Flemington on Saturday week, it seemed a very retaliatory move. But instead of criticising the race, Vlandys defended the Racing Victoria move even though the event will be run only one week before the $1 million George Ryder Stakes over 1500 metres at Rosehill – the highest contested ratings race run in Australia in the past two seasons.

“I was the first person to compliment Racing Victoria on the All-Star mile even though it was smack bang in the middle of our autumn carnival,” continued Vlandys. “I have no concerns about it; I think it’s a great initiative and I think it’s good for the long-term future for racing in Australia. It will hopefully attract a whole new generation because they could become customers of NSW racing, or Queensland racing or any racing for that matter.”

Since those comments, the All-Star Mile field was declared and no fewer than nine of the final field of 14 runners have won, been placed or contested races at group one level, and it’s highly unlikely any of the 14 including Happy Clapper will now be in Sydney for the George Ryder Stakes.

“There’s certainly a place for tradition, but it’s a balancing act,” quipped Vlandys. “If you stay solely on tradition you will perish; it can only last so long. What I have noticed is that this under 35 years racegoers are different to what other generations have been.

“Every new race we have put in place has been pretty well self-funded – The Everest is funded by slot holders, The Kosciuszko by sweepstake tickets. This one is a completely new product and a joint venture because we have concentrated on returning our traditional revenues to bread and butter races.

“When I started with Racing NSW the metropolitan prizemoney was $40,000 a race; now it’s $125,000. Everything has gone up two or three hundred percent because we have given all our traditional revenues back to the bread and butter races. At the same time, you have to have aspirational races; races that promote your industry and that people can aspire to. They should be aspiring to win a Golden Eagle or an Everest. We need those races because they are our marketing races to get new customers.”

No one denies that Vlandys has done an excellent job for Racing NSW over a long period. His no-nonsense approach and determination to succeed has seen him step on a lot of toes without stopping to apologise – a Captain Marvel type character we could greatly benefit from on the eastern of the Tasman.

And in the unapologetic Vlandys responses of this interview, he said something that would loudly resonate with most Kiwis in terms of what has been sadly lacking – “We have to look at ourselves every year and do a three, a five, and 20-year plan.

“My job is to maximise the returns to the participants in NSW. As far as I’m concerned the revenue I can get for them is prizemoney. The more prizemoney I can return to the participants the better. I will continue to look, to review and to analyse every opportunity and take it if I can maximise the revenue for those NSW participants. If I don’t do that, I’m negligent and should not be here.

“Any CEO has to maximise the dividends to the shareholders, “continued Vlandys to strongly reemphasise the point. “My shareholders happen to be the participants. We will continue to look at all elements of racing and analyse everything we do to maximise the revenues for the racing industry.”