3 minute read
It has been almost three years since Racing NSW changed their decision to allow Canberra to re-enter the Highway races, but there is still dissatisfaction amongst ACT’s training ranks.
Canberra-trained horses have been sent to the bottom of the ballot for $75,000 feature for country trained horses since allowing them to nominate for the event back in 2018. There were 26 nominations for this Saturday's TAB Highway, a class three event over 1500 metres, with seven of them being trained out of Thoroughbred Park. Out of the seven runners, six would have been guaranteed starts based on their benchmark rating if they were trained outside of the ACT.
One of the territory's leading trainers, Matthew Dale, has two horses nominated in Antilles and Vallauris. With the prizemoney set to increase to $100,000 as of the first of July, Dale said it's not only hard as a trainer to work around the ballot exemption, but also upsetting as an owner to be denied the opportunity to compete. It's extremely frustrating and quite hard to manage and can often be very disheartening for an ownership group as well," he said. You can plan from a long way out and have a horse well placed and if they don't get a run, and they should have got a run on their ratings, you're sort of scrambling to find the plan B, which is, more often than not, not as suitable. Other races like that aren't programmed around it, because there is the highway race. It is very frustrating and one that we're trying to work through."
The original ban came back in December 2017, after country NSW trainers suggested their Canberra rivals possessed an unfair advantage due to the facilities at Thoroughbred Park. Dale's runners Antilles and Vallauris have both been nominated in races elsewhere due to the uncertainty of gaining a start in the race, as they're placed at the bottom of the ballot. The Highway races are used as a pathway from country racing to metropolitan racing, helping narrow the gap between country and metropolitan grade.
"It is a really good progressive pathway from country into highways into city racing, and it just adds to the frustration that you can't plan or program a guaranteed start where you otherwise would be," he said. I think in time it should revert back. Canberra was always regarded as country New South Wales for 30 or 40 years through my time and nothing has changed, but yet that (being placed at the bottom of the ballot) did change. It's frustrating to say the least but we work through it."
The Canberra Racing Club tried to rival the ban by introducing a $50,000 event called the Federal. When Canberra were allowed back into the Highway races, the total purse dropped to $40,000. Earlier this year, the decision was made to increase the prizemoney for maiden events at Canberra, created by decreasing the prize purse of the Federal to $34,000. Canberra has encountered problems remaining competitive as country NSW prizemoney continues to rise. The ACT presently offers $2,000 less per standard TAB event than NSW racing clubs. For instance, a Benchmark 58 in Canberra is worth $20,000, whilst across the border at neighbouring Queanbeyan, the same race is worth $22,000 and soon to be $24,000 as of July 1.