By Michael Lynch
A decade ago Australian racehorse trainers were complaining about the influx of foreign raiders cashing in on Melbourne's big spring carnival races, with even a legend like the late Bart Cummings floating the idea of a cap on international runners in the Melbourne Cup.
How things change. Now even racing's top administrators are saying that without the presence of European bred or raced stayers, the Melbourne Cup would be a far worse race and that Australian trainers simply have to get used to the idea that the foreigners will continue to make up an ever greater proportion of contenders for Melbourne's big money prizes.
Trackwork: Tommy Berry riding Curren Mirotic. Japanese turnover on the Cup was $87 million.Credit: Getty Images
"The internationals are here to stay – they are not going anywhere," Racing Victoria chief Bernard Saundry said in a media review of the spring carnival. "And without them it would be a poorer carnival."
When European and Asian horses began arriving in numbers for the big cups races there were fears that turnover on the money-spinning events might fall as punters, unaware of the relative strengths of their form lines or the quality of their jockeys and trainers, would keep their hands in their pockets.
But with familiarity grows greater confidence, aided and abetted by the digital explosion, with specialist websites and the mainstream press now able to provide much more information about unfamiliar horses and races.
It has got to the point where most keen Australian punters, the sort who bet up big, now know the significant lead-up races in Europe for the cups contenders – events such as the Ebor Handicap, Irish St Leger, Prix Kergorlay – and can assess their form with much greater accuracy.
So much so that according to RVL figures on turnover from the carnival, betting on the races deemed to be "key spring features" was up an overall 4.2 per cent from 2015 to 2016 – from $1.542 billion a year earlier to $1.607 billion in 2016.
Turnover during the three-day Caulfield Cup carnival was up marginally, from $212 million in 2015 to $214 million this year, while the two-day Cox Plate fixture – which has drawn plenty of criticism for its Friday night meeting, which many believe has a negative impact on the track for the following day's Plate – produced stronger growth figures. Turnover was up from $142 million a year earlier to $149 million this year.
The biggest percentage turnover increase came during the four-day Cup carnival at Flemington, where turnover leapt almost 10 per cent, from $598 million in 2015 to $657 million this year.
Given that the majority of the Melbourne Cup field was either trained overseas or had begun their racing careers in Europe, that is the strongest indicator that punters now either don't care about the foreign form lines, or feel sufficiently confident about their analysis of them that they are prepared to bet accordingly – as the 4 per cent lift in betting on the Cup alone would indicate.
"The understanding of the form is much better now than it was. There used to be a debate about how many runners there should be, but that is not happening now," says RVL chief handicapper Greg Carpenter.
One crucial market that RVL is hoping to tap into to increase turnover dramatically is Japan.
At present Japan only allows its punters to bet on a handful of overseas races in which there are Japanese runners. This year there was one Japanese contender in the Cup – the outsider Curren Mirotic – yet Japanese turnover on the great race was $8.7 million, RVL figures say.
This contrasts with the lucrative Hong Kong market, which produced revenue streams of $62.7 million betting on 17 races over the four-day Flemington carnival.
"You can see how important getting it right for the Asian market is for Victorian racing," says Carpenter.