More than 40,000 people will converge on Royal Randwick on Saturday for the seventh running of The Everest. The betting turnover on the race will be tens of millions of dollars. Neither factor confers any particular status on the race.
Each of the first five horses past the winning post, of the 12 in the race, will bring their connections and slot holder more than a million dollars in prizemoney. The winning connections receive $7 million and a diamond-encrusted trophy.
Giga Kick wins the 2022 Everest at a packed Royal Randwick.Credit: Getty
The Everest is the world’s richest horse race on turf. That this 1200-metre dash, which hadn’t even been conceived of just a decade ago, is now the phenomenon that it is almost inexplicable.
But these torrents of gold, and hurricane of razzamatazz, must count for nothing, in assessing The Everest’s status as a horse race.
When dispassionately contemplated, it constitutes an absolute nonsense that The Everest, viewed solely through the prism of it being a 12-horse race, isn’t conferred with highest-level group 1 status – the same classification, that is held by the Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate, Golden Slipper and around 70 more races throughout Australia.
Actually, it’s ridiculous that The Everest isn’t conferred with status as a black type race under racing’s rules and policies as they’re presently written. When you take into account what constitutes a group 1 race, there can be no sensible or irrational argument put forward as to why The Everest should remain unclassified.
Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’Landys.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The proper conferral of group 1 status, on particular races exceeding objective quality standards, is imperative to the ongoing integrity and vitality of the worldwide thoroughbred breeding industry which in turn produces the horses, the buyers and the industry participants in the first place.
One of the express objectives of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities is to promote the integrity of the systems imposed for grading and classifying the most elite and highest quality races throughout the world.
Australia’s national member association of the IFHA is Racing Australia. The regional association member for Asia, of which Racing Australia is a member, is the Asian Racing Federation.
The members of Racing Australia include a nominee of Racing NSW, as the principal racing authority in this state. As it’s constituted, Racing NSW is statutorily empowered to control, develop, promote and regulate racing in NSW. The conception and development of The Everest being an exemplar of why Racing NSW exists.
For this is where things get confusing. Decisions about classifications of Australia’s races are made by Racing Australia’s Pattern Committee. In 2011, the Australian Racing Board (as RA was then known), together with ARF’s almost 30 members, resolved to adopt ARF’s Ground Rules. These serve as the rules to be applied for the conferral of elite, black type and group status.
In March 2013, RA’s Pattern Committee published an explanatory rationale for decisions of the RA Pattern Committee, made under the ARF Ground Rules. In that statement, the Pattern Committee represented to stakeholders that the ARF’s Ground Rules were intended to disregard interstate jealousies and subjective factors of perceived importance, and instead operate so that if the ARF Ground Rules were complied with a race would be considered for admission to, or an upgrade in group status.
The conferral of group status is meant to be made, adjusted or refused by RA (and approved by the ARF in the case of group 1 races) based on the quality of the race measured over its last three renewals. What’s important is the quality of the horses placing first through fourth.
Under the Ground Rules, the specific benchmark for a group 1 race is that it must achieve or exceed a “Pattern Race Rating” of at least 115. That Pattern Race Rating is the calculated average, over the preceding three years, of a race’s Annual Race Rating.
In turn, that benchmark is calculated by obtaining the year-high World’s Best Racehorse Ranking (published by the IFHA) for that year, for each of the first, second, third and fourth placegetters in the race, and then averaging the rankings of those horses. For example, Yes Yes Yes, which won the 2019 The Everest, had a 2019 WBRR ranking of 120. Nature Strip, which won the race in 2021, had a year-highest ranking of 124; Gytrash, which came third in 2020, 118.
The Annual Race Ratings for The Everest from its inception in 2017 through to 2021 (the numbers for 2022 aren’t available) are 120.25, 120.5, 119.75, 121.5 and 120.5.
Applying those numbers against the IFHA’s own listings of the world’s 100 highest-ranking group 1 races, in none of the years from 2017 to 2021 was there greater than 24 group 1 races conducted throughout the calendar year and anywhere in the world which rated higher using the same Annual Race Rating metric.
As to a domestic quality comparison, throughout 2020 no other race in Australia rated higher than The Everest. For 2021, there were just two races – the Cox Plate and the Queen Elizabeth Stakes – which rated of higher based on the Annual Race Rating and the demonstrated quality of the horses that were most competitive in the race.
The point here is that any argument about the Everest being showy or gimmicky or somehow contrived through the slot-holder concept or on any other basis is irrelevant. It’s nonsense that The Everest isn’t a group 1 race. It should have been such from at least after its third running, if not before. RA is manifestly derelict in its duties to the sport by not elevating the race. The reason it hasn’t been elevated to group 1 status is because the two major thoroughbred regulators, Racing NSW and Racing Victoria, have a power of veto over any proposal. NSW Supreme Court documents allege Victoria was the only state to block The Everest’s elevation to group 1 status at a RA board meeting.
The conferral of black type status on a race like The Everest isn’t required as a stamp of legitimacy or otherwise. Yet at the same time, it doesn’t appear that there’s any justification for withholding that title.
If the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities, the Asian Racing Federation and Racing Australia are at all concerned about integrity, good governance and legitimacy, the inescapable conclusion is that it’s in the best interests of this multibillion-dollar sport, and its myriad stakeholders, to ensure that The Everest is classified as the highest quality of horse race it evidently is.
If that classification isn’t forthcoming immediately, questions must be asked of Racing Australia especially, in terms of precisely why a race of such magnitude and increasing international significance is, for want of a better term, locked in the freezer.
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