FROM THE SHERIFF'S DESK - FLYING THE AUSTRALIAN FLAG
By John Schreck | Wednesday, April 27, 2016
John Schreck, a former Chief Steward in both Sydney and Hong Kong, has seen both the colourful and the dark sides of racing. His wealth of experience and his deep knowledge of racing matters across the board is unquestioned and the reputation he built as a racing ‘lawman’ remains firmly entrenched in racing’s history. Shreck’s personal blog, ‘From the Sheriff’s Desk', appears exclusively on HRO.
It is good to see that Australian horses competing overseas are generating mainstream media coverage.
It is always difficult at this time of the year for the sport to compete with the football codes because they just blanket the sports pages and without the likes of Chautauqua and Buffering competing overseas it would very difficult for racing to get any significant coverage at all in the news pages.
These two horses will carry the Australian flag into battle in the HK$ 10 million Chairman’s Sprint Prize in Hong Kong on Sunday. It will obviously be a very interesting race with horses from all around the world competing there.
Buffering is expected to jump and go out there to immediately lay down the challenge to the others. That will test him out no doubt ... while Chautauqua will be running on from behind which can bring its own difficulties, but they do give Australia two very real chances of another international victory.
It is interesting that Chautauqua will officially run as a Michael Hawkes trained runner. Chautauqua is registered under the Hawkes training partnership in Australia but they do not allow training partnerships in Hong Kong.
I’m not certain how that change was arranged, but obviously it has been done and everybody is happy to have the horse there.
All being well Chautauqua will go on to Ascot after Hong Kong to continue Australia’s overseas interest while Buffering, already a winner in Dubai, will return home.
I have said for years and years that Australian horses have to go and fly the flag in the northern hemisphere, particularly now that they have come out with ratings for world races in recent times.
The Melbourne Cup didn’t get in the top hundred according to the people who do these ratings and I think the top Australian race came in a twenty-something as far as I can recall.
That is just an indication of the perception of Australian racing in the northern hemisphere ... so the more our horses can go away and perform well the better.
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The Queensland Winter Racing Carnival is under way and the much anticipated return to racing at Eagle Farm is drawing near.
I, like everybody else, wish the Brisbane Racing Club (BRC) well with the Eagle Farm opening but I do have some concern that the first race meeting back at the track will now be on a Group 1 day.
Years ago we put in place a break-back rail at Randwick and we put it in on Doncaster day. The idea was to try and spread runners out in the straight and minimise the chances of horses being held up.
We did it on a Group 1 day which, in hindsight, was an awful, awful mistake.
Nothing like that should ever be done without plenty of trialling beforehand and I would have thought that the BRC by reopening racing on a new track at Eagle Farm on a Group 1 day is taking an almighty risk.
I wish them luck. I hope things work out but my experience with those sorts of things is that it is better to have, as most business’ do, a soft opening.
I know that is what they had planned originally. I believe that the proposed soft opening race meeting is basically going to be replaced by jump outs.
Jump outs are not racing though, so it is not the best scenario going into the opening meeting, but that is the position.
I truly hope from the sports point of view that it all works out well.
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