What comes next for Rosehill and participants?

Cover image courtesy of Australian Turf Club

Not many days start so inconsequential for the thoroughbred racing industry, before a bombshell is dropped that has the gravity to change the landscape of the sport. With the planned shutting of Rosehill catching many industry personnel by complete surprise, reaction has been swift, with trainers and executives spending Thursday discussing the announcement with the wider media.

A major element of the wider picture of this story is what voice that ATC members will have in the process.

There is the undoing of the merger agreement, formed between the STC and AJC 13 years ago. The Merger Act barred the sale or disposal of racecourses for a period of 10 years, now concluded, however there were also two additional clasues in the agreement around the Golden Slipper Stakes and Rosehill Gardens assets that will need to be addressed.

It is understood that a majority vote from the 15,000 strong ATC membership base would be needed to enact the plan, with the club now having to convince the rusted-on pocket of former Sydney Turf Club (STC) members to forfeit their heartland race and racecourse.

With such enormous ramifications for the industry, The Thoroughbred Report caught up with Hamish Esplin to digest the news from a breeding perspective, alongside a look at some of the corporate considerations that may take significant spotlight as this process rumbles on.

Tentative optimism

President of Thoroughbred Breeders New South Wales (TBNSW), Hamish Esplin, is well-positioned to consider the ramifications of such a monumental shift in the state’s racing topography. With approximately 60 per cent of horses in training being owned by breeders, their thoughts, and indeed their dollars, remain a valuable component of industry health.

Esplin, who practices law alongside his burning passion for the racing and breeding industry, remains cautiously optimistic about the future of racing in the state.

“The sale of a major industry asset, for the sums that are being published, $5 billion dollars, is almost unfathomable, as to where that leaves the industry,” he told The Thoroughbred Report on Thursday.

“Everyone is aware that Sydney is going through a housing problem, I don’t think the announcement of itself is going to cause any immediate impact, however (there is) the old saying of ‘when you sell the farm.’

“It places a very big burden on those responsible for the management of the proceeds. It’s hard to consider what you could do with $5 billion dollars, if that is what is to be returned to the industry, or to the club. I’ve read the press release, I understand the plans they’ve got, no-one would bemoan the need for significant investment in infrastructure, not only in Sydney but around the state for racing facilities.

“I just think there’s going to be a lot of water under the bridge and I hope the people in charge of stewarding this project, not only through the sale process but then the reinvestment process, are going to handle it well. That is all we can ask for.

“There are plenty of people who would be critical of the use of infrastructure funds in the past, however with the size of these funds, (it) would potentially allow the ATC to do something that, as they say, would leave a legacy for a very long time. There’s a lot to get right, to make sure that happens.”

“You can be nothing but optimistic about the future, notwithstanding that it might come with some pain. You don’t get progress without pain.”

Asked on the position of TBNSW around the announcement, Esplin said, “I just don’t have an opinion at the moment, I understand both sides of it.

“Breeders more than most participants are traditionalists, and love history, you don’t get into breeding unless you love quoting third, fourth, fifth dams, sire lines, obscure relatives, first foals, 10th foals, birthdates, we are all very passionate about the history of the sport.

“In Australia, Rosehill, and certainly the Golden Slipper, are synonymous with that (history). That causes us some concern, it may well be that we get something that’s better, a better Golden Slipper or a better racecourse. It all remains to be seen.

“There’s been plenty of closures of racetracks over the years, and the industry rolls on. Once upon a time we were selling Canterbury and assets like that, and now we’re not.”

Constitutional considerations

Only 13 years ago, the merger of the Sydney Turf Club and the Australian Jockey Club was finalised, creating the ATC, one of the most powerful organisations in world racing, owing to their ruling over no less than four venues for racing in the greater Sydney area.

“I went to many of the meetings when the two clubs were merged, it was a very controversial issue at the time, I don’t think the announcement (of the closure of Rosehill) would have occurred without a unified metropolitan race club operating in Sydney,” Esplin reflected on the process.

“Nobody could have envisaged at the time that this is the kind of thing that could happen, that you could sell Rosehill to get $5 billion dollars to underpin the industry.”

Reduction of club assets has been touted as far back as the initial merger, with section 23 of the Australian Jockey Club and Sydney Turf Club Merger Act explicitly barring the sale or disposal of racecourses for a period of 10 years.

This clause was primarily inserted to protect Canterbury Park, which has been the subject of sporadic speculation of a closure. Media reports from 2011, 2014 and again in 2021 have indicated varying levels of ATC interest in reducing their footprint, with a proposal to extend the protection of assets for another five years in 2021 not receiving support from the then-Government.

Canterbury Park, which was speculated to be worth at least $500 million in 2021, will now be extensively redeveloped as part of the purported windfall from the Rosehill closure, according to the media release disseminated by the ATC yesterday.

The announcement on Wednesday is complicated by initial concessions made by the Australian Jockey Club at the time of the merger in 2010, which included the 10-year protection of Canterbury Park, as well as the below two clauses:

1) That the Golden Slipper Stakes and a Golden Slipper Festival of races of similar status to the existing Golden Slipper Festival will remain at Rosehill Gardens during the autumn each year;

2) That Rosehill Gardens and Royal Randwick will be maintained as premier racecourses and event centres in Sydney with racing, training and patron facilities of a standard and upkeep equal to a premier Australian metropolitan racecourse.

The Sydney Turf Club, which at the time of the merger had a membership base of around 8000, had included these clauses explicitly to protect racing in the western suburbs, although it will not escape readers that it is not possible to hold a 2-year-old Group 1 in an apartment building.

This leaves the proposed closure of Rosehill with a pretty clear hurdle to leap, as the original conditions of the merger stipulate the running of the G1 Golden Slipper S. at Rosehill, without a time cap, unlike the embargo on the sale of assets.

The pressing infrastructure issue

One element that has caused spirited debate across the breadth of the industry, from participants to enthusiasts, is the notion that once you lose a racecourse, you don’t get it back.

Often talked about within South Australian racing is the loss of Victoria Park Racecourse, which had operated thoroughbred racing for around 150 years before its closure in 2008. Earlier this year, broadcasting legend Bruce McAvaney made another push to get the venue back up and running, with anguish present in the local industry about the loss of the historic venue.

The ATC have outlined bold initiatives from the windfall sale of Rosehill Gardens, however New South Wales’ racing industry has been promised an array of impressive 'world-class' infrastructure improvements by Racing NSW in recent years, with mixed outcomes.

As detailed by this publication in recent weeks, a number of touted infrastructure projects in New South Wales have either stalled, been dropped from public reporting or scrapped entirely.

Plans for double-storey training complexes were specifically referenced in the 2022 Racing New South Wales annual report for Scone, Cessnock, Hawkesbury and Gosford, initiatives that were not included in the 2023 annual report.

The Thoroughbred Report has previously asked for updates from Racing New South Wales on aforementioned outlined capital projects, to which no comment was provided.

In the 2019 Racing NSW Strategic Plan, the vision was set out for a world-class training centre and 'horse town' modelled on Newmarket in England.

The Southern Highlands was touted as the venue for ambitious plans to transform a proposed mine site into a training facility that would allow trainers to buy land and build their own stables. It claimed trainers could “invest in an asset that will enjoy ongoing demand. Over time, this will better enable trainers to secure their financial future rather than simply renting stabling over a prolonged period.”

“It is not easy to find that much land but we have looked a couple of options,” Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys said at the time. “Ideally it would be centre around a country town, which would be revitalised by the investment and become Australia’s Newmarket.”

Whilst Bong Bong Farm was acquired soon after, it has since been privately leased to Ciaron Maher and David Eustace, with the Southern Highlands project no longer featuring in infrastructure plans outlined in the Annual Report. There has been no Strategic Plan released by Racing NSW since the version four years ago.

While it bears underlining that those projects fall outside of the scope of the ATC, participants in New South Wales have been provided with many bold promises around infrastructure that are yet to materialise. The ATC will undoubtedly be looking to ally similar fears with its stakeholders, to ensure the membership support the new plans.

Prominent figures speak up

The passion of the racing industry has been on full display since the story broke, with a number of passionate responses.

Gerald Ryan told The Thoroughbred Report on Wednesday night that the outcome is “terrific” for racing going forward, while other participants have expressed reservations and outright opposition to the loss of Rosehill.

Industry legend Gai Waterhouse spoke to RSN on Thursday morning, expressing disappointment at the announcement.

“I think it’s the saddest decision they’ve ever made,” Waterhouse opened with.

“The Government are completely wrong, I don’t think they’ve thought it through. They say they’ve done their due diligence, I bet there’s not one racing person there that has any idea.

“Firstly, we’ve only got four racecourses (in Sydney), the second thing (they say) they’re going to put in 25,000 homes, how do they think the people will find parks and entertainment?

“Look at Sha Tin in Hong Kong, look at Moonee Valley down in Melbourne, they’ve built the homes and different buildings around the racecourse, keep the racecourse, work around it.”

Sha Tin and Happy Valley are glistening examples of mixed-use precincts, with high-rise apartments towering over two elite tracks in world racing. The model is taking off in Australia, Moonee Valley, as Waterhouse referenced, has embarked on extensive redevelopment to utilise land, while the Western Australian Turf Club has ambitious plans to add aged care facilities and a retail precinct as a leasehold for their residual land around Ascot Racecourse.

The South Australian Jockey Club has a $350 million commercial and retail precinct in the works at Morphettville, while the Ascot Green development between Eagle Farm and Doomben Racecourses is scheduled for completion next year.

“The demographic of the people that go to Rosehill will not go to Randwick or Warwick Farm, those punters and those racegoers go there (to Rosehill). It’s a bit like going to Caulfield or Moonee Valley, they go to that course, so you’ve lost them for life,” Waterhouse continued

Earlier on RSN, ATC Chairman Peter McGauran spoke to Matt Stewart to offer his perspective on why this option is imperative for the sustained viability of the racing industry.

“We’ve executed a memorandum of understanding with the government so that there’s high-level agreement on the future sale of Rosehill and the transfer to Horsley Park for a new training centre. It’s non-binding on both parties,” he told RSN.

“A final binding decision awaits us towards the end of next year.”

Asked if New South Wales racing can handle the loss of Rosehill, McGauran said, “Not permanently, no, but we have a vision for the club and for Sydney racing, and it’s the amount of money that the land sale brings about that allows us to bring the vision to reality.

“If we don’t evolve as a sport and make hard decisions like this, sport’s dying Matt, we’re seeing that all around the world, and racing jurisdictions are not immune from that.

“We believe we can leapfrog 50 years over the course of the next decade as we reconstruct our metropolitan racing.”