Dear Members,
Watching the NSW government inquiry into the proposed sale of Rosehill racecourse this week was a timely reminder of how important it is that we have a large and strong owners association.
The representative of the NSW thoroughbred owners association was asked by the inquiry what owners' thought of the proposal. When matters of such importance to the industry are being considered it would be ideal that the owner's association would be able to represent the considered view of as many owners as possible.
The register of owners is housed with Racing Australia. We have approached them requesting access to the database to enable us to alert owners to the existence of our association and invite membership. This could be easily achieved by simply including a consent clause in the registration document for owners' contact details to be passed to the relevant owner's association. A dynamic relationship between owners and a representative association would make for much easier and impactful participation with regulatory bodies in matters of critical importance to thoroughbred ownership.
Racing Australia has resisted providing access due to concerns regarding privacy. We have pointed out that ownership of an owner's contact details belongs to the owner and consent overcomes issues of privacy. They have also advised that their policy is not to engage with representative bodies such as QTOA because such engagement is the domain of the relevant Principal Racing Authority, in our case Racing Queensland.
Racing Queensland has been supportive of our position. Racing Australia has now undertaken to take the matter to the next Board meeting for consideration.
We are hopeful of a positive outcome and will keep everyone advised.
INDUSTRY ISSUES ON AGENDA
The QTOA has been working in collaboration with the Thoroughbred Alliance on several topical issues currently facing the industry.
First and foremost is the recent issue with the Eagle Farm track after jockeys raising safety concerns over the construction site on course at the top of the home straight.
As a result of the concerns by jockeys after horses - all who weren’t trained at the track - were found to be shying at the construction site, race meetings have been move to other venues while temporary advertising structures are placed in front of the building and changes are made to alter the look of the site.
There will be no race meetings will be held at Eagle Farm until at least mid August and it remains to be seen whether the situation takes longer to be rectified with trials needing to conducted featuring horses not trained at Eagle Farm before racing can resume.
Changes to the racing program can be found here
The issue of track ratings, or perhaps more accurately tracks receiving significant downgrades on raceday without any significant weather event, has also been a topical one in recent times and the Thoroughbred Alliance has raised this issue with Racing Queensland.
It has been suggested that perhaps Stewards or an independent representative could be best placed to determine track ratings before raceday and the Alliance has requested a meeting with RQ and QRIC to discuss how the industry can move forward on the issue with confidence.
As a result of some recent instances where tracks have been downgraded on raceday without any weather intervention, the QTOA has been supportive in requests from trainers/owners seeking compensation for their horses being scratched after arriving at the races to learn of a downgrade.
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