Like others on the fringe of the circle, I was as worried as hell when news leaked out that PVL was going to take on the Cox Plate.
“You can’t do that mate” I thought, “you’ll be the most unpopular person in the racing world.”
I couldn’t believe he would do it, for it would be sheer madness, a step way too far.
Well it turns out I was right.
What the great man has done is put the the G1 George Main Stakes back a fortnight, change its name from that of the Cootamundra grazier to that of the King, and – most importantly of all from an owners and trainers perspective – up the prizemoney from $1 million to $5 million.
$5 million!
The time honored race won by luminaries like Shannon (twice), Baguette, Wenona Girl, Kingston Town (twice), Emancipation, Vo Rogue, Campaign King, Shaftesbury Avenue, Lonhro, Winx (three tines), Verry Ellegant, and Anamoe is now the richest mile race anywhere in the world.
And it will be run a week before the Caulfield Cup, and two weeks before the Cox Plate, and has the same prizemoney as both of them.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
With rare examples such as the champion Verry Ellegant in 2021, the Caulfield Cup has been a ho-hum race for about 2o years.
Now V’Landys has all but rendered it cactus, for the VRC have a massive problem.
The Caulfield is obviously a Group 1 race, but it is a Group 1 handicap (emphasis added).
Pressure is on from around the world for the VRC to turn it into a WFA race, like all the other great mile and a half events around the world. It makes sense, for top class handicap racing was introduced at a time when Australia didn’t have a huge of stock of horses to race in it, and the foreign brigade hadn’t started coming. They have now, but only the 2nd graders. The top flight stayers go the Breeders in the US or the Arc in France or the Championships in the UK, each of which are run at weight for age.
Only the eye pickers want to run in handicaps any more, and the top flight trainers from around the world avoid them like the plague with their best horses, who will be weighted out of contention by the weight of their achievements. Trainers of top flight stayers avoid the Caulfield Cup like the plague.
But guess what?
The only way that the VRC can ever change the Caulfield Cup from a handicap to WFA, and still keep the race’s Group 1 status, is by approval from the Australian Pattern Committee.
That one that RV and their blind, clueless allies have demanded that PVL leave, or they will blow it up.
This is what happens to idiots who take advice from yuppies at PR firms.
They blow themselves up.
Despite how we may fool ourselves, the world class trainers don’t bring their best middle distance horses to run in the Cox Plate either. They take them to the Arc or the Breeders or to Champions Day at Ascot instead. So no matter how hard the Moonee Valley Race Club tries, their best race is always going to be a notch behind the great ones around the world, and that’s just the way it is, and the crazed quarantine periods and veterinary procedures imposed on imports by Racing Victoria just drive the best stable around the world away. Coming to race in Sydney is a lot more attractive for the internationals, as Racing NSW welcomes them with open arms, and doesn’t make trainers who want to bring the horses we want to see over jump through a million hoops.
That’s where the King Charles III comes in.
There are just 7 Group 1 miles in the top 50 races in the world.
By calendar month they are:
MAY – 2000 Guineas over the Rowley Mile at Newmarket ($900 000)
MAY – Lockinge Stakes at Newbury ($650 000).
JUNE – Queen Anne Stakes on the 1st day of Royal Ascot ($1.4 million).
JUNE – Yasuda Kiden in Tokyo ($4 million)
AUGUST – Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood ($1.8 million).
AUGUST – Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville ($1.65 million).
NOVEMBER – Mile Championship, was at Hanshin now at Kyoto ($4 million).
DECEMBER – Hong Kong Mile at Sha Tin ($4.8 million).
See the big gap between August and November?
Boom.
That’s where V’Landys has whacked the newly upgraded and rescheduled $5 million time honoured mile race in the calendar.
Right where no other country is running one.
The timing is perfect.
PVL can get the best milers from around the world to come and race for the world’s richest WFA mile prizemoney, gallopers from the US, Europe, Asia and beyond, even perhaps South Africa, and it hardly affects their preparations for the big ones at home at all.
Where do you reckon the eyes of the world will be in the Australian spring?
On the 3rd and 4th grade handicappers coming to Caulfield trying to manipulate the weights?
Or on the same ones or their equally lower class stablemates here for the big Cup?
On the 2nd and 3rd grade weight-for-age gallopers here for the Cox Plate?
Or will they all be focused on the A-grade world class milers coming to race at the best track in the world, for the greatest prizemoney for 1600m on the globe?
The answer is obvious.
21st century racing is about wagering revenue.
The more punters around the world who watch and bet on your races, the greater the wagering revenue will be.
That is obvious too.
Why is that only Peter V’Landys gets it?
PVL and me.
Racing Victoria are snookered, trapped right against a wall, and it is they who have put themselves there.
Soon they will come crawling to V’Landys on their knees.
I hope they do it mid-October, for if they come on Everest day they will meet the King while they are there.
Both of them.
PVL is a genius.
God Save the King, for nothing can save the boofheads that run Racing Victoria.