A huge crowd flocked to Flemington yesterday, most in black and white. Few knew the race that gives the day its name is on notice.
The Victoria Derby, first run in 1855, sits on the Asian Pattern Committee’s warning list after rating below the Group 1 benchmark four years running. The VRC says nothing is off the table to save it. The talk is of a shorter trip and lifting the $3 million purse to $6 million.
The VRC is right that the Derby must stay a Group 1. But the problem isn’t the race. It’s the measuring stick.
The Pattern grew out of Britain’s Duke of Norfolk committee in the mid-1960s and was launched in Europe in 1971. It gave the best horses a coherent programme, and gave breeders a clear measure of quality. North America adopted its own version within two years, and the rest of the world soon followed.
It was a brilliant answer to the problem of its day. But racing in 1971 was a different business. There were no corporate bookmakers, no race-fields fees, no wall-to-wall racing vision and no corporate marquee days. Today racing runs on wagering, broadcast rights, sponsorship and crowds.
Yet the tool that confers Group 1 status still asks only one question: how good were the horses?
An instrument built for a pre-digital age, now applied in a hyper-analytical one, now shapes the commercial value of racing’s biggest days. That’s the tail wagging the dog. If the Pattern wants to stay relevant, it needs modernising.
Let’s be honest about the Derby’s ratings problem, because it isn’t going away. We don’t have enough quality local stayers. The commercial breeding shift towards two-year-olds and sprinters has stripped the Derby of its sex appeal for studs.
Shorten it to 2000m and field quality might creep up, but even then, by the letter of the law, the Derby is unlikely to consistently produce Group 1 ratings again.
What the ratings can’t measure is everything else. The Derby is the fifth-biggest betting race in the country, turning over about $26 million last year.
The Coolmore was easily the best three-year-old race on yesterday’s card. Nobody calls it Coolmore Day. The Derby isn’t just a horse race, it’s a brand name, and that brand sells the day.
What won’t solve the Derby’s quandary is money. The same crowd would have turned up whatever the purse, and the extra million dollars added to this year’s Derby did nothing to improve the field – in fact, it was one of the weakest edition’s I can recall.
Talk of pushing the purse to $5 million or $6 million is lunacy.
Do the sums. On a direct basis, $26 million in turnover on the Derby returns about $780,000 to the industry. Another $2 million in prize money needs about $67 million in extra turnover to pay for itself. Another $3 million needs $100 million.
But the call on the Derby’s future won’t be made at Flemington. It rests with the Asian Pattern Committee, under the umbrella of the Asian Racing Federation.
Australia runs one of the most commercially successful racing jurisdictions in the world, the envy of Britain and France as they face serious headwinds. It shouldn’t be dictated to on this.
There are two ways to fix this. The first is to build commercial measures into the Pattern itself: turnover, crowds and profile counted alongside ratings.
Purists will say that dilutes black type. But the Pattern exists to serve racing, not the other way round, and what’s in racing’s best interests has to come first.
The second is a new tier above Group 1, call it Super Group 1. A race would earn it in one of two ways: superior quality, or iconic status that sets the race and its day above all others. The bar would be high and spelled out, with a long history, top-tier turnover and a day built around the race, so it couldn’t be handed out as a favour.
The Derby would qualify on the second count, and an iconic race would never face downgrade. The ratings would keep telling breeders about the horses, and the status would tell everyone else about the race.
Whether it stays at 2500m or ends up at 2000m, the Victoria Derby will remain one of the 10 most important races in Australia. Judge it on more than ratings and it’s one of the most important races in the world.
It shouldn’t be downgraded, and racing shouldn’t throw millions at it trying to stop that. The Everest has shown a great race doesn’t need the Pattern.
The real question is whether the Pattern can afford to lose races like the Derby. Fix the measure, not the race.
