The All-Star Mile has lost public appeal this year and failed to pull the best horses away from Sydney’s autumn carnival. As a result, there is a call to turn the race into a $20 million Melbourne version of The Everest.
Racing bosses are being urged to turn Melbourne’s All-Star Mile into a $20 million version of The Everest because of a Sydney-sized hole in this year’s field. The call for Racing Victoria to create the world’s richest mile slot race comes amid criticism that this Saturday’s event at Caulfield has fallen short of its purpose - disrupting Sydney’s autumn carnival by dragging away NSW’s best horses.
NSW-trained pair Fangirl and Think It Over, two of the country’s best 1600m weight-for-age horses, are the glaring absentees from this year’s race - making it anything but an all-star clash. Richard Irvine, chief executive of social betting platform Wolfden, believes the best way to drag the headline horses out of NSW at this time of year is to increase the prizemoney. He says mimicking The Everest format by creating a $20 million Melbourne slot race - selling 12 starting positions for $1 million each, adding the current $4 million All-Star prize money and luring a $4 million sponsor - would attract the best horses, pull limelight away from Sydney’s autumn carnival and create multiple storylines and talking points. NSW racing supremo Peter V’landys sparked the Sydney-Melbourne racing wars by running The Everest during Melbourne’s prestigious spring carnival. The slot format is an American concept in which slots or positions in the race are sold to individual stakeholders, who then find a horse to represent them by doing deals with trainers and owners. The Everest, which was worth $20 million in prizemoney last year, is the richest race on turf in the world, with connections of the winning horse sharing in $7 million. The Melbourne Cup - the world’s richest handicap race - is worth $8 million with $4.4 million going to connections of the winning horse.Irvine said Racing Victoria’s decision-makers should look at the runaway success of The Everest and attempt to emulate it.“You can swallow your pride and pat NSW on the back, and say, ‘well done’.” The All-Star Mile’s appeal has already been diluted this year after Racing Victoria cut prize money from $5 million to $4 million, removed the public’s ability to vote horses into the field after it was manipulated last year to gain a start for a substandard runner, and slashed the race’s marketing budget by a third., the shortest-priced favourite in the race’s six-year history, and last year’s spring sensation Pride Of Jenni. The race was further weakened by an injury to Alligator Blood, whileChampion trainer Chris Waller conceded last week his star mare Fangirl would probably be racing at Caulfield on Saturday if the All-Star Mile was worth $10 million. “But I’m not asking for that,” Waller told SENTrack. “Yes would get Fangirl there, but I don’t think it’s for the better of racing, so she’s sticking to her path that we’ve set out which will now be the George Ryder on to the Queen Elizabeth.” Kembla Grange trainer Kerry Parker said he was approached by Racing Victoria to bring Think It Over to Melbourne for the All-Star Mile but the horse’s owner opted to stay in Sydney on a four-start programme. Racing Victoria CEO Andrew Jones said the All-Star Mile had “well and truly” been group 1 standard for the past five years, but said the governing body was open to the concept of a slot race.“If we thought that would deliver a bigger audience at a reasonable cost, we would look at it for sure,” he said. “The slot race is a proven format around Australia. But there are other formats as well that can work as well. The All-Star Mile has been a really good race … for the past five or six years.”Irvine said he was interested in improving the concept even though he would be at Caulfield for this year’s All-Star Mile and expected it to be a great spectacle. He said selling $1 million slots for a 12-horse field would create fascinating story lines over the wheeling and dealing between corporates, trainers and owners.The Everest’s 12 slot holders are James Harron Bloodstock, Max Whitby and Neil Werrett, TAB, The Star & Arrowfield, Godolphin, Yulong Investments, John Camilleri, Coolmore, Australian Turf Club, Chris Waller Racing, Newgate & GPI Racing and Trackside Media.A spokesman for betting giant Entain, which owns Ladbrokes, said the company was “a strong supporter of innovation in racing”. “Racing Victoria would be the first to concede that the All-Star Mile’s place in the racing schedule needs to be reviewed,” the Entain spokesman said. “Whether a slot race model is the right one is ultimately for them to decide. But depending on the commercial structure, we’d certainly be interested to look at the model and how we could support.” Yulong Investments and Coolmore were contacted by this masthead to see if they would support an All-Star Mile slot race but did not reply, while Waller declined to speak about the concept.
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