by Brian de Lore
Published 19 July 2019
Economies around the world rise and fall on confidence, gold medals at Olympic games are won and lost on the same commodity, and the analogy more than ever before applies to New Zealand racing and breeding as we close in on the 2019-20 racing season.
The breeding business underpins every element of racing in New Zealand including our success in neighbouring Australia. The algorithm upon which our halcyon days were based was to retain our best female families, import the best bloodstock affordable from Europe and breed horses in much higher numbers.
That formula has contracted in every aspect to the extent that compared to forty years ago we are breeding half the numbers. We also have only one (Savabeel) compared to the 20 stallions in the top 50 we had in 1978 on the Australian Stallion Premiership. We have only four percent compared to 10 percent of the Australian thoroughbred population, and can no longer afford to keep our good mares and race fillies when alongside a comparatively buoyant Australian industry.
That history might bore some readers, but it’s regurgitated here only to highlight today’s level of industry confidence, or in this era, the lack of it. A breeder approached The Optimist last week to ask whether or not they should breed their mares this season – a crystal ball to provide accurate advice on such matters would be a welcome addition to every breeders mantlepiece.
A core group of breeders will always breed all their mares. Others will decrease the band such as Waikato Stud did this year, reducing the 220 to a band of 180. Some are now saying they are breeding only every second year and further anecdotal evidence says others are just giving up.
On the other hand, Ray Knight of Novara Park Stud in Cambridge is all positivity about the coming breeding season and says his bookings are ahead of this time last season. Novara Park stands the promising young stallion Sweynesse and newcomer Staphanos.
“I think breeders have become more price-conscious when doing their matings,” Knight said this week, “but a lot of breeders who are undecided or say they are not breeding their mares change their minds because it’s also counter-productive to leave the mare empty.”
The number of foals bred season by season is a direct reflection of confidence in the industry. It’s critical we don’t drop below current levels because a further decline will directly affect the average field size for domestic racing, and to fall below the threshold number of about 10.5 has the domino effect of reducing betting interest – the only thing that drives stakesmoney.
It’s racing’s Catch-22. The prospect of field-size reductions and fewer numbers reduces the overall quality of horses racing from season to season, and the Pattern Race Committee will again confront the dilemma of eliminating some listed races and reducing group races to a numeral of diminishing significance.
The Pattern Race Committee is due to meet again in early August and would it be a surprise if racing suffered a further bout of black-type erosion? The answer is no. Any such decisions will bring a further lessening of confidence.
Examining the history, it’s worth noting the decline in racing is a worldwide phenomenon and has been occurring for decades, but evidence exists which shows good governance can arrest this whirlpool drop into an unknown black hole. Both Australia and Ireland are examples to cite.
In the 1960s New Zealand racing commanded 96 percent of the betting dollar – the only competition for it being Golden Kiwi. Racing in 2019 is down to 16 percent of that same dollar. Couple that with a Racing Act of 2003 that hasn’t worked and governance of the poorest order, especially that seen from the NZRB in the past 10 years, and we are where we are today.
Confidence is what we need going forward and while RITA is the four-letter word on everyone’s lips, and one in which we have placed our faith going forward, other hurdles and hoops to jump through lie waiting on the path to revitalisation.
RITA has been in the job only three weeks, and we need to give that board time to tackle its mountain of problems, do due diligence on all of them, and bring the Messara Report into play over the next year. Not only will RITA have to deal with the dog’s breakfast they have inherited from NZRB, but they have also been involuntarily partnered with DIA, which is a fate no one would have wished upon them.
The DIA’s involvement in likelihood goes back to very soon after Messara delivered the report to the Minister nearly a year ago, or even before that. If you are wondering why the setting up and collection of both racefields and the POC (Point of Consumption) levy will take another six to 12 months, or even 18 months as one astute pundit suggested this week, then the DIA is your answer.
While racing looks for points of confidence upon which it can burst from the barrier stalls and leap into a bright, new future, the DIA (Department of Irregular Activity) is what Cutts’s Brush was to the Grand National Steeplechase in the 1960s and 1970s – enough to trip everything up.
Cutts’s was Riccarton steeplechase jump of five feet three inches high, constructed of stiff manuka, of a jumping length of five-foot, and known to support a Morris Minor car which it successfully held firm sometime in the sixties. The best of steeplechasers were found wanting at Cutts – no chance of brushing through it. Today it’s a shadow of its former self.
The DIA is the designated authority, appointed by the Minister, and it’s critical that the revenues from racefields or Betting Information Use Charges (BIUC) as RITA is calling it plus POC which became legislation through the Racing Reform Bill No.1, start accumulating to racing and sporting codes at the earliest date.
When fully operational, the potential is to bring new revenue to this struggling industry to the tune of $20 million to $25m per annum. And implementation shouldn’t be that hard as the blueprints for both can be found with user charges and application forms (the templates are done for them) on both the Racing.com and Racing NSW websites.
When we had to listen to all that carry-on from NZRB’s Glenda Hughes and John Allen about missing out on $1 million a month from not getting racefields, what a joke. NZRB would never have been getting it – nothing was in place in the form of agreements with overseas betting operators to collect it – and still isn’t.
Further confidence would be forthcoming if a replacement for the ill-fated The Informant could be launched in the near future. Plans are afoot, and since the advent of RITA, some progress is now being made to do something with the much-maligned and poorly managed Best Bets.
The industry badly needs a decent form guide and printed medium for weekly news and communication, and The Informant’s demise was an untimely setback. Further progress of a new publication should surface in the coming weeks.
