Following the recent agreement with the Australian Turf Club over stable fees, trainers in the main, have averted from moan, groan, gristle and whinge onward with the new age of affluence.
The former ATC management – the mob keen to sell Rosehill Gardens – attempted to impose a 10 percent rise of fees of stable fees next year instead of the reasonable COI 3.8 percent.
Industrial action was in the air, and the turf was awash with trainer tears, conditions I have experienced over the decades. Being reared in Doncaster Avenue, Kensington, alongside Randwick racecourse, then the hub of Sydney racing, stables in most backyards abounded.
Many trainers lived on a hand to mouth existence. Accounts and bills were paid when winners arrived. Some owners failed to meet their financial obligations. Chicanery thrived in endeavours to meet the feed bill – for horse and human. Float companies, farriers and vets also had to extend time to pay facilities.
In latter decades I met the owner of the leading grain merchant on whom the industry depended. Asked who left the leading deficit, a massive field, he maintained it was one of the great trainers. He had been a former top jockey, too. I will not sully his reputation but he had champions that would have made him a top earner currently.
Tom Kennedy, an astute horseman who became an outstanding administrator as Sydney Turf Club chairman, epitomised the situation with his “Sermon at the Randwick Mile” (where training stalls were situated) on his departure from the training ranks to those interested and hungry.
In a catered function Kennedy told others, I recall Fred Allsop, Reg Harris, Jack Hogan “The Lolly Pig”, the affable Pat Murray (“The Pink Pussycat”), and Bob Easton being present amongst many others. I don’t remember the Lee brothers, Jim and Greg, regulars in the area being there, but their master Cec Rolls, to whom they were apprenticed, was.
Kennedy told the assembly that racehorse trainers were the only workers in the world that would strive 24 hours a day without overtime or penalty rates for every day of the year. No holiday pay or superannuation. It all hinged on getting a good horse, pay off the debts and start again.
Kennedy was more successful than most, often had a drawer full of cash in his High Street stable, but went into pubs and a stint of driving his own taxi on the Gold Coast before becoming the Sydney Turf Club chairman.
During his time Rosehill training facilities were criticised. A trainer’s representative, similar to Richard Callander, the mouthpiece for them at the recent negotiation with the ATC, approached Kennedy to rectify the problems. “You cannot prepare a horse under these conditions,” Kennedy agreed. “I will arrange for the STC to float your horses and those of the others that are not satisfied to Hawkesbury at our expense. You will be more comfortable there.”
Rosehill, the major base of Chris Waller, and Warwick Farm now produce more winners as a training centre than Randwick.
Before this week Waller’s prizemoney tally for the year was $42,021,906 with Ciaron Maher runner-up on $27,753,354.
Of course they are the mass producers, churning out hundreds of fit and healthy horses: mind boggling figures in the glory days of Tommy Smith and Bart Cummings although it could be argued Colin Hayes, at Lindsay Park, would have come close.
Great horses, like Via Sistina for Waller, rocket earnings.
But what about Joe Pride, who stressed he would not condition more than 70 horses? Pride, operating from Warwick Farm, is currently in third position on $18,183,715 with prizemoney this year, according the John Barker in “Best Bets”.
Barker stressed Pride has only had 476 starters. “That’s $38,201 every time he’s saddled one up,” he wrote.
At Royal Randwick on Saturday Pride has produced an intriguing conundrum with the improving Columbia Blue and untapped stablemate Big Red Tequila who takes on strong opposition in the Petaluma Handicap, a Waller free zone, but against the promising Ice Kool, red hot in ability making his recent debut at Warwick Farm.
