Winning The Everest might bring about a life-changing payday for a horse’s owners, but what if it wasn’t even the most lucrative cheque they could earn this month?
For all the riches of the world’s richest turf race, the creation of a Sportsbet-backed Sydney sprint series with a $6 million bonus attached to it has created another fortune wheel just a fortnight after The Everest.
So how does it actually work?
What is the Sydney sprint series?
A new initiative for Australia’s best sprinters which offers bonus money for running in designated races throughout the spring carnival in Sydney. The Nature Strip Stakes will be the final leg at Rosehill this Saturday and is run a fortnight after The Everest. The event is named after the winner of the previous year’s event.
The Sydney sprint series was announced by Racing NSW earlier this year and was designed to keep some of the country’s most marketable horses in the harbour city.
Lost And Running is joint top of the Sydney sprint series.Credit:Ashlea Brennan
How much is it worth?
Eye-watering money.
A whopping $6m will be shared among the top five horses at the end of the series, making it extremely lucrative to campaign your horse in Sydney for the majority of the spring carnival.
The leading pointscorer will pocket $2.5m while there is a huge amount of money on offer for the connections of horses that finish second ($1.5m), third ($1m), fourth ($750,000) and even fifth ($250,000).
So can a horse’s owners actually take home more money by winning the Sydney sprint series than The Everest?
Unbelievably, yes.
While there’s no doubt The Everest has the largest first prize purse ($6.2m) in Australian racing, a horse’s owners have to split that money with a slotholder.
While the deals can vary, most are done roughly on a 50-50 basis, meaning horse owners might not pocket much more than $3m for having their horse win The Everest. It might even be less depending on the deal.
But by winning the Nature Strip Stakes, which carries a $1.725m first prize bounty alone, owners can also add the $2.5m sprint series bonus. That means they can bank a cool $4.25m for about 75 seconds work – and it doesn’t need to be shared with a slotholder.
Nature Strip won’t contest the race named in his honour at Rosehill on Saturday.Credit:Getty
How does the Sydney sprint series actually work?
Pretty simply.
Horses which contest The Concorde Stakes, The Shorts, Premiere Stakes, The Everest, Sydney Stakes and Nature Strip Stakes score points according to their finishing position in races. First picks up five points, second four points, third three points, fourth two points and fifth one point.
But here’s the kicker: the final leg of the series, this week’s Nature Strip Stakes, will be worth double points and horses must contest that race to be eligible for the bonus. They must have also raced in two previous events on the schedule.
Who’s in the running to win this year’s bonus?
Lost And (finally) Running. He’s the joint top pointscorer so far and the John O’Shea-trained horse will be desperate to atone after being scratched from The Everest on race morning due to a skin irritation.
“Well, he had an easy time and that’s why we trialled him [last week] because he’d been idle for seven or eight days,” O’Shea said. “He just needed a day in the float and a hitout to keep him up to the mark.
“Sometimes when they come off a setback like that they can be a bit rusty so it was good to give him a trial. He can trial better, but I know he’ll bounce out of that.”
Lost And Running joins The Everest placegetter Mazu in equal first place on eight points with Eduardo (seven), Rocketing By (five), Overpass (four) and Masked Crusader (three) the other horses in contention. Overpass is tipped to bypass the Nature Strip Stakes and head to the $10 million Golden Eagle in any case.
The world’s best sprinter has to be there, right?
Not necessarily.
Nature Strip, who was beaten into fourth as the shortest-priced favourite in the history of The Everest earlier this month, is going to bypass the race named in his honour.
Trainer Chris Waller will head to Melbourne on the final day of the Flemington carnival for the Champions Sprint, which will give his horse three weeks between runs after a taxing effort in The Everest. The Nature Strip Stakes is run over 1300 metres, a distance the horse has never tackled previously.
Nature Strip would have only had to win at Rosehill this week to claim the bonus given he’s just one points behind Lost And Running and Mazu on the Sydney sprint series leaderboard. But a large band of his Melbourne-based owners will get to see him in the flesh instead of him having another run in Sydney.
Surprise The Everest winner, three-year-old Giga Kick, will be waiting for a rematch after the three-year-old returned to Melbourne for trainer Clayton Douglas.
