Pick A Night, Any Night, But Give Us Top Horses
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday March 24, 2003
With the Sydney Turf Club considering Fridays, night racing needs top horses, as emphasised last Saturday, to be successful.
The club should have been satisfied to top 10,000 for the Canterbury Guineas meeting although it fell short of what the attendance at Rosehill Gardens would have been had the meeting been held there on Saturday afternoon.
Still, Canterbury under lights, bolstered by top racing, featuring the outstanding Defier, had atmosphere, a point sadly lacking at many meetings generally and nights in particular.
Some at the STC consider Friday nights, being road-tested by Moonee Valley in Melbourne, may do much better than the drab Thursdays. Of course, the trots, which traditionally hold Fridays, would drive a hard bargain but it might be said racing turnover would benefit from the move.
Anyway, the worth of Friday night-Saturday city racing might depend on the number of worthwhile horses available. Would Friday night drag out of the Saturday program? At best, it would hardly be a regular feature. Either way, a delicate balance would be required but the idea is worthy of more examination.
Ideas seem to concern certain elements of the STC committee, hardly a happy little play school at present.
GIMME GOSFORD: Obviously, the 2002 Victoria Derby form is suspect.
Again Helenus, winner of the Victorian classic, flopped in the Canterbury Guineas on Saturday night, while Hydrometer, runner-up in that derby, was given every chance by Damien Oliver, only for the filly Fine Society and Beaver, beaten at Gosford previously, breeze past him.
Hydrometer was more seasoned than Helenus, which went into the 1900metres with only the Hobartville over 1400m as a foundation. Trainers have long criticised the traditional AJC Derby lead-up due to the step up in distance from Hobartville to the Canterbury Guineas.
Fortunately Gosford, under the guidance of live-wire chief executive Michael Beattie, has given trainers the opportunity to plot a new course by switching the Gosford Guineas, 1600m, to 16 days before the Canterbury Guineas instead of nine.
It has had vital bearing on the Canterbury Guineas with Carnegie Express pulling off the double last year and Fine Society making the Melbourne three-year-olds look like hacks after being runner-up at Gosford.
Granted, Melbourne three-year-olds like Don Eduardo and Sky Heights have won the AJC Derby in recent years but they have had a solid racing foundation at home before coming north.
NAME SHAME: The importance of the late George Ryder to Sydney racing has been downsized by the STC.
Ryder was one of the great visionaries of the turf, confirmed by his brainchild, the Golden Slipper, which changed the face of Australian racing. Since it started in 1957, the Golden Slipper program has flourished into one of the best race days on the Australian calendar.
For his services to the industry the STC named a major race after him the George Ryder Stakes held on the third day of the Golden Slipper carnival in modern times.
This year, it is called the ``Darley Stakes". Underneath, in the official media guide, in far less imposing type in brackets, reads (George Ryder Stakes).
Sponsorship is important but must the STC completely sell off such an important item? Yes, the Golden Slipper and Melbourne Cup have sponsors, as does the Cox Plate. But the traditional title retains a major position.
Perhaps it might be argued that the Tancred Stakes, now known as The BMW, went the way of the Ryder decades back. Without any disrespect to Harry Tancred, Ryder made a special contribution. Both, of course, were STC chairmen.
Other worthy events, named after trainers and racehorses, have been dropped for sponsors but few if any meant the same as Ryder.
Surely equal billing, even Darley-Ryder, would have been more appropriate.
Ryder, a prominent breeder, had to battle hard to get the Golden Slipper accepted, even by the STC committee, because it was felt the sprint was being put on to ``suit his own ends", namely a stallion he had at the time, Newtown Wonder, which went fast but stopped even quicker.
Alas, the progeny of Newtown Wonder didn't have the quality for the budding group1 event.
Also, throughout the decades, the three-kilogram advantage for fillies over colts and geldings, a Ryder initiative, has been criticised.
``The weight difference for the fillies has played a great part in the success of the Golden Slipper," Ryder enthused in The Story Of The Golden Slipper Stakes, by Warwick Hobson.
Fillies have won the past three, so the cry has gone up again. However, before them, two colts and a gelding were successful.
MELBOURNE MILESTONES: Lee Freedman, now preparing his horses basically on a training farm on the Mornington peninsula, broke a run of 46 outs when Ribe won the Moonee Valley Oaks on Saturday afternoon. And Freedman's apprentice, Tasmanian Craig Newitt, who turned 18 on March10, became one of the quickest to out-ride his allowance on the same day, confirming Melbourne is more apprentice-friendly than Sydney.
Newitt notched his 60th city winner, Special Harmony, on Saturday night but is not the youngest to do so Patrick Payne accomplished the feat on his 17th birthday in May 1992.
In a more novel achievement, the Cranbourne club held a thoroughbred/trotting/greyhound event recently, after which a reporter asked a commentator on Fox Sports News: ``You don't see a race like that every day?"
To which he replied: ``No, you don't. And under the circumstances I think it's best you don't."
DISAPPOINTING: The number of dead-ends Barberousse ran into before being beaten 1.4 lengths into fourth place in the Canterbury Cup on Saturday night.
HORSE TO FOLLOW: Resistor, having only his second start, did well to finish third behind Kusi in the Skyline Stakes at Canterbury on Saturday night after losing ground on the turn. The Danehill colt has plenty of scope for improvement.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
`This industry must re-engineer itself to survive'
STEVE FERGUSON, Racing NSW corporate affairs general manager, in yet another paper on the state of racing in NSW. Have we heard it all before and will anybody take any notice this time?
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald