THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN: RQ EXECUTIVES NEED TO STAND UP AND BE COUNTED

By Graham Potter | Saturday, January 28, 2017

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.

Prize money ... or lack of it ... remains the bane of the racing stakeholder’s life in Queensland, yet you have to credit all of those owners and trainers adversely affected by the downturn in Queensland prize money allocation for their on-going commitment to the state’s racing industry.

Take the featured Saturday meeting at the Sunshine Coast today for example.

Eight races are scheduled. Five of those races have full fields and a total of one hundred twelve runners have been carded (before final scratchings) to chase the $565 000 prize money on offer.

As we know, Sydney racing is all the rage as far as prize money is concerned. So let’s contrast their meeting at Rosehill Gardens today with the Sunshine Coast menu.

Nine races will be contested at Rosehill with stake earnings to be paid out totalling just over $1 million ... so you can understand why local participants would be salivating at the prospect of ever running consistently for that kind of money. (Only one race at Rosehill today is worth less than $100 000).

But, before we get carried away with how good things are down south, let’s take that comparison a little bit further.

Rosehill has one more race than the Sunshine Coast but has eighteen less runners carded at the meeting. While six of the eight races at the Coast have fourteen or more runners, only one race at Rosehill can match that statistic, and that race happens to be Highway Plate ... a race restricted to bona fide country trained and domiciled horses.

Rosehill’s feature race, the $200 000 Expressway Stakes has only six runners, although allocated prize-money is paid down to tenth place. The $100 000 Sunshine Coast Cup has eighteen runners and five emergency acceptors.

So who are the better supporters of their industry?

Of course acknowledgement of the Queensland racing participants resolve against the odds means little in itself but, as stated at the outset, they deserve every credit for their on-going support of the industry.

They also deserve better ... in a whole host of matters, not just prize-money.

They have stood up and been counted.

It is time for those in authority at Racing Queensland to do the same!