![]() Everyone is in better shape than what they were three years ago.” “For all the talk of a war between the states, there are no losers. “Engagement in Victorian racing has never been higher,” Jones says. Jones, who took up the role in charge of the body that oversees racing in Victoria three months ago after a career in cricket administration, believes staging big races on the same day has proven mutually beneficial. ![]() “More people watching racing in NSW, the better, the more in Victoria, the better,” new Racing Victoria CEO Andrew Jones says. Picture: Jenny Evans/Getty Imagesįive years on from the creation of Everest, Victoria has got used to the idea of Sydney wanting to stage big spring races. The Golden Eagle followed hot on the heels of The Everest. Why wouldn’t we have good race meetings through October, November?” If you’re a florist, you open on Valentine’s Day. “October and November are the two best periods to promote itself,” V’landys tells CODE Sports. That talk has quelled, but the Racing NSW boss, who juggles the job while Chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission, is adamant racing needed to evolve. Even queried why the Melbourne Cup needed to be in early November. In 2019, Victoria Racing Club (which runs Flemington racecourse, home of the Melbourne Cup) Chair Amanda Elliott criticised V’landys as a silly little man with silly little ideas.Įlliott apologised, but it was indicative of the angst between those established spring carnival organisers and the upstarts in Sydney. In 2019 the Golden Eagle, worth $7.5 million was created, run at Rosehill on Cox Plate day, and agitation flowed. So Racing NSW created The Everest, a $10 million race for the best sprinters in the land, and plonked it smack-bang in the middle of October. Sydney just held nondescript meetings, filled with average horses and meagre crowds. In 2017 Racing NSW, led by CEO Peter V’landys, dropped a bomb on the way spring racing operated.įor more than 100 years, the Victorian spring classics highlighted by the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups had been the bridge between winter footy and summer cricket. It promises to be a good day for the sport.īut hostility between the powers-that-be either side of the Murray River has lined the path to get to this point.įor the past five years, horse racing chiefs in New South Wales and Victoria have traded barbs about what tradition means and innovation dictates in one of the oldest sports in Australia. Thirty-thousand, weather-dependent, will fill grandstands, eager to live normally again. The Caulfield Cup, worth $5 million is the focal point. The Everest, worth $15 million will pack out Randwick with 40,000 racegoers, made up of a new crowd to the sport. On Saturday, two races worth a combined $20 million will be held within an hour of each other in Sydney and Melbourne.
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