I was a little undecided as to exactly where I stood in regards to TasRacing's decision to slash $230,000 in prizemoney from its feature racing calendar and redistribute it over more meetings during the season. The obvious answer is that it benefits the regular participants so its a clear choice but there is also a decent argument that you need to attract some quality interstate participants to race to give your product some legitimacy on a national level.
It was only whilst watching Globe Derby last Saturday that it really hit home to me that TasRacing have done the right thing. Harness Racing in South Australia is on life support currently and they ran a C2-C5 series for great prizemoney and all that happened was that a host of Victorian raiders crossed the border and pillaged most of it which also tends to happen with the majority of their feature races. Similar things have been happening in Tasmania for years and the legitimacy argument just doesn't stand up.
Last year for example, all of the following races (and prizemoney) were won by interstate raiders:
$125,000 Tasmania Cup - Bettor Strike (NZ)
$100,000 Australian Derby - Lanercost (QLD)
$50,000 George Johnson - Mendelico (VIC)
$50,000 City of Launceston Cup - Power Of Tara (VIC)
$20,000 Mother Of Pearl - Mendelico (VIC)
$20,000 City Of Devonport Quality - Im Mark Antony (VIC)
$20,000 Gold Label - Rowan Direct (VIC)
Taking this into account, the recent decision to restructure the prizemoney is the right one. Keeping the Tasmania Cup as a Group 1 was a priority though to maintain at least one flagship race and this has been done with it still being worth $100,000 this season.
The full story is available on the TasRacing site:
Prizemoney in Tasmania is already very comparable (if not better) to most other states and any further injection to the base rate can only be good for the long term sustainability of participants.
