THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN: AN EXTRAORDINARY, ILL-FATED FLIRTATION WITH THE RACING INDUSTRY

By Graham Potter | Sunday, October 5, 2014

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily

The final and complete dispersal sales of Patinack Farm owned horses and properties will be completed shortly and the curtain will finally come down on a story that means different things to different people.

Nathan Tinkler is not the first high-flyer to come crashing down to earth and he certainly won’t be the last, but it is his sortie into the horse racing world, with his flirtation with glory and his ultimate demise, which tells a unique story.

Tinkler arrived with a roll of thunder, plundering sales rings around Australia and New Zealand with a spending intensity that had not been witnessed before.

It didn’t take long however before Tinkler’s trials and tribulations, along with those who were sucked into the whirlwind he created, began to make headlines on a regular basis … for reasons arguably detrimental to the Patinack brand.

Clearly all was not well with the ‘Empire Building’ process from a relatively early stage. Conflicts and contingency plans soon became part of Patinack’s daily grind and, in the end, nothing could stop Tinkler’s grand plan from unravelling on as big a scale as anything else he has done in racing.

At the Gold Coast this week at the Patinack Magic Millions dispersal sale, Tinkler’s 500-plus horses were sold for a $33.9 million. Stud farms and stallions still have to come under the hammer but it is indeed a sobering thought that when all is done and dusted the return will possibly not do much more than service Tinkler’s debt to Gerry Hervey alone.

In his wake, Tinkler leaves behind several identities who have benefitted in some way or another from his participation in racing and a second group whose comments would probably be less complimentary.

As has been well documented elsewhere, Tinkler’s excesses were not confined to racing and his other business activities and the troubled path some of them have followed obviously had a major impact on his racing interests but, that said, even in isolation, the handling of his racing enterprise arguably always had signs of disaster entrenched in its game-plan.

Was Tinkler too big, too soon?

Few would argue against that fact. Racing can bite and swallow up people with a minimum of fuss. It has a force which does not discriminate between those its favours and floors. That force has to be respected by anyone planning to survive long-term in the game. Here you are entering an arena where swagger and wealth mean little.

Was Tinkler ill-informed or ill-advised?

Assessing value and potential ability of bloodstock while having a healthy insight into the overall state of the industry at any given time is a tricky assignment, as is the determining of the scale in which you invest.

Get it wrong or, as importantly, if your advisors get it wrong even with the best intentions - you lose! It is always a gamble.

Did Tinkler not understand the fact that well-publicised conflicts he had within the industry were damaging the profile of Patinack Farm, or did he seemingly not care enough about that to practise even the most basic form of damage control?

Whatever the truth in these matters, the final chapter is now being written on this most extraordinary of ill-fated flirtations with the racing industry.

It’s been quite a ride!

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