Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
Regular readers of our sister publication TDN USA would have seen its recent columns asking people across racing to name the industry’s problems and present a solution. TTR kicks off our own version of the series today.
Each topic will begin with a response from someone inside the industry, before we pull the issue apart more widely through data, trends, pressure points and examples from other racing jurisdictions, sports and industries.
We welcome strong responses from across the industry to: vicky@ttrausnz.com.au.
The first response comes from Troy Corstens, a Group 1-winning trainer and President of the Australian Trainers Association.
Corstens is close enough to the daily pressures of training to understand racing’s frustrations at ground level, but through the ATA he also sees how those frustrations play out across the broader industry.
What do you think is racing's biggest problem?
“We do not have anywhere to think properly about our own future,” Troy Corstens begins.
Troy Corstens | Image courtesy of Racing Photos
I do not mean we lack opinions, this industry has no shortage of those, everyone has a view on prizemoney or programming or the latest rule change.
What we do not have is a genuine space where people from different parts of racing can sit down together and actually build something, without defending their own patch, without worrying that a bold idea will get them laughed at, and without the conversation collapsing back into the same complaints we have been having for 20 years.
“What we do not have is a genuine space where people from different parts of racing can sit down together and actually build something.” - Troy Corstens
That is the real problem. Not that we lack good thinkers. We have brilliant commercial minds, sharp young people, trainers and administrators and media and data people who could genuinely reshape this industry if you put them in a room together with the right question.
But we have never built the room. So those ideas stay in someone's head, or get raised once at a meeting and quietly die, and we keep having the same circular arguments instead of moving forward, because nobody owns the next step and nobody is asking the bigger question, which is: what would we actually build if we were starting this industry today?
That absence costs us more than people realise. Every year we do not have a proper forum for bold thinking is a year we let someone else, another sport, another form of entertainment, work out how to be more modern, more commercial and more attractive than we are, while we stay busy defending the way things have always been done.”
What is the solution?
“I have started building exactly that room myself.
It is an idea I have called the Racing Futures Lab, and we are currently in discussions with Racing Victoria about making it happen properly, rather than just running it as something informal on the side.
The idea itself is simple, bring together a small, deliberately diverse group, a commercial thinker, a progressive trainer, someone from wagering or media, a data person, a younger voice, someone who will happily challenge me, and give them a structure where every idea is genuinely welcome and nothing gets shot down before it has had a chance to breathe.
“The idea itself is simple, bring together a small, deliberately diverse group... and give them a structure where every idea is genuinely welcome and nothing gets shot down before it has had a chance to breathe.” - Troy Corstens
The founding session runs on three questions, and the questions matter as much as the people in the room.
1. If we were building Australian racing from scratch tomorrow, what would we design differently to make it stronger?
2. Where are we currently leaving money on the table, and what practical change would unlock it?
3. What is one bold idea you would trial in the next twelve months if you knew nobody would criticise you for it?
That last question is where the real gold sits, because it strips away the fear that normally keeps good ideas locked away in this industry.
The part I care about most is what happens after the conversation.
This is not a talkfest and it is not another roundtable that produces a nice discussion and nothing else. Every session ends with the room narrowing dozens of ideas down to one or two worth actually testing, assigning an owner, a small working group and a timeline, because an idea without an owner dies within a week.
Done properly, this becomes an ongoing thing, regular sessions, pilot projects that actually get tried in the real world, and eventually a genuine home for innovation in this industry rather than something that only happens by accident when the right people happen to be at the same barbecue.
“Done properly, this becomes an ongoing thing, regular sessions, pilot projects that actually get tried in the real world, and eventually a genuine home for innovation in this industry.” - Troy Corstens
Racing does not have a shortage of smart people who care deeply about this industry's future. What we have lacked is a room built specifically to let them build it. That is what the Racing Futures Lab is for, and I think it could quietly become one of the most important things this industry does for itself.”
Note from the editor: About this series
At TTR, we have never been especially interested in pretending racing’s problems do not exist.
The industry does plenty well, and it is full of good people, but it also has real pressure points that are too often softened, avoided or discussed only in private. We think racing is better served by putting those issues in the open because progress is much harder when the industry pretends the hard parts can be dealt with later.
So we are starting a new series that seeks to ask people what they believe is the industry’s biggest problem, and what they think the solution is.
The answers will not all be the same: A breeder will see the sport differently to a trainer. A wagering executive will see different risks to an owner. A young person trying to find their place in racing may notice something a long-serving administrator has stopped seeing.
Some will point to the foal crop. Some to wagering. Some to ownership, costs, welfare, integrity, programming, attendance, the next generation, the cost of producing a yearling, training fees, vet fees, or difficult euthanasia decisions.
This series is not pretending there is one answer. Racing does not have one problem, so it needs many solutions to address them. It also has a set of connected pressures, and most of them do not sit neatly inside one state, one boardroom or one part of the industry.
Each topic will begin with a response from someone inside the industry. From there, we will pull the issue apart properly: the data, the trends, the pressure points, and the examples from other racing jurisdictions, sports and industries that may be worth testing in Australia.
We welcome responses from across the industry, whether by email or public discussion. The strongest contributions will help shape where the series goes next.
Email vicky@ttrausnz.com.au to submit your thoughts.
TTR cannot fix these problems. But we can put them on the table, ask better questions, give serious ideas a proper airing, and keep pushing for leadership to be more open about what is not working and what might come next.
