What Eduardo can teach racing about finding homes for Thoroughbreds

Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything

For every Nature Strip thriving in a high-profile second career, racing needs hundreds more Thoroughbreds quietly succeeding with everyday riders. Getting more horses into those homes means fixing what happens between the racetrack and the next owner.

A retired Thoroughbred can cost less than a decent saddle. For a rider looking for their next horse, that can be an extraordinary opportunity, but it can also be the start of a very bad match.

Last Sunday, Jo McKinnon wrote about what happens when horses leaving racing end up with people who are not ready for them. The horse is cheap, available and often beautifully bred; the buyer sees potential. A few months later, that same horse can be on the market again with a rather different description attached to it.

Difficult, dangerous, too hard to handle.

Sometimes the horse has changed, but often the owner was simply never equipped for what they bought.

Jenny Bennett has spent 26 years coaching riders while also working in racing as a barrier attendant and clerk of the course, so she sees the handover from both directions. She knows the trainers trying to find homes and the riders looking for horses, and one of her favourite examples is Eduardo (Host {Chi}).

Eduardo spent his racing career taking on the best sprinters in the country. His old rival Nature Strip (Nicconi) is now attracting attention in the showjumping ring, but Eduardo has taken a rather less glamorous route. His owner is an amateur with two young children who wanted a horse that would look after her.

“She just wanted something that’s really safe to go jump 60 centimetres and things like that, and he is exactly that,” Bennett said.

For Bennett, that is a success story worth talking about.

“There is definitely a market for them in that space as well.”

Most riders are never going to jump 130cm, compete at a major championship or chase serious prizemoney. They want a horse they can ride after work, take to a local competition, hack around on the weekend and trust enough to enjoy themselves.

There should be an enormous market for a horse like Eduardo.

The difficulty is getting more Thoroughbreds from the racing stable to that sort of home without losing them somewhere in between.

Cheap to buy does not mean easy to own

Thoroughbreds are plentiful once they leave racing and, compared with many purpose-bred performance horses, can be remarkably inexpensive. Outside formal retraining and rehoming programs, however, there is no universal process for assessing whether the buyer and horse actually suit one another.

A trainer might know the horse extremely well and know very little about the person buying it. A buyer might have ridden for years but never taken on a horse straight from racing. Neither situation guarantees disaster, but it leaves a lot resting on judgment, luck and whoever happens to be around to help afterwards.

That period after racing can be where reputations are made.

A horse adjusting to different feed, a different workload and a completely different way of being ridden may need time. It might need stronger groundwork, better management or simply a rider experienced enough not to turn every fresh moment into a fight.

Get that wrong and the horse can quickly become “a problem”.

McKinnon’s point was that racing cannot complain about Thoroughbreds developing a bad reputation in the equestrian world while sending horses into it without enough support around the people taking them on.

Some jurisdictions have already recognised that.

Racing Queensland’s Off The Track program offers eligible owners 10 fully subsidised lessons with an accredited QOTT coach if their horse has retired from racing or breeding within the previous 18 months. Those lessons can cover riding, groundwork or basic horse care, while owners coming into the program later can still receive three.

Tasracing has a similar 10-lesson program for eligible Thoroughbreds retired within the previous 12 months. Racing Victoria provides education, discounts to clinics and competitions, along with a system that allows owners to register retired horses.

Queensland and Victoria both work with accredited retrainers, while New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing, Racing SA and Racing WA also have retrainers or rehomers within their programs.

Hong Kong goes further again. The Hong Kong Jockey Club handles the retraining and rehabilitation of retired racehorses within its own program before placing them into new careers in Hong Kong or through partner centres overseas.

There is plenty being done. It is just far from uniform, and the level of help a new owner receives can depend heavily on where they live, who they know and whether they even realise the help is available.

Maybe the industry is selling the wrong horse

When racing promotes Thoroughbreds after racing, the stars naturally get the attention.

A champion racehorse becoming a high-level showjumper is a wonderful story. Big competitions with big prizemoney make good pictures and provide an obvious showcase for the breed.

They also represent a fairly small slice of the people who own horses.

Bennett thinks the quieter Thoroughbred needs a bigger profile.

“They can be great family horses,” she said. “People think they want a stockhorse or similar, because they’re supposed to be chill, but what they really want is a Thoroughbred.

“In my experience, horses are either born quiet or they’re not. Once you take the race feed away and give them a different purpose, most Thoroughbreds return to how they were when they were born, and that is usually pretty quiet.”

There is already serious money going into creating reasons to compete on retired racehorses.

Equimillion in New South Wales offers $15,000 for first place in its classes, with a $660 nomination fee and a further $440 to enter a class. Horses must have been bred in New South Wales with the intention to race, or have raced or trialled in the state.

The Off The Track Carnival at Boneo Park has no geographic restriction, pays $5000 to first place and charges $40 per championship.

Both give Thoroughbred owners something to aim at, but there is a much larger group of people who will never choose a horse because of a prizemoney bonus.

They will choose one because it is safe, sane, affordable and enjoyable to ride.

“They have had so much exposure during their life,” Bennett said. “They’ve been handled since they were born. They have a great work ethic, and they love being with people and having a job, whatever that job may be.”

Hong Kong has used retired racehorses in riding schools and as pleasure horses. Bennett wants more Australian riders to see Thoroughbreds in exactly those jobs.

A horse safely carrying an amateur around a local 60-centimetre course might not attract much attention on social media. It may, however, convince another amateur that a Thoroughbred belongs on their shopping list.

After the matchmaker

Bennett has built something that works, albeit on a small scale.

Through racing, she knows trainers with horses approaching retirement. Through coaching, she knows riders looking for horses. When the right horse appears, she often has a pretty good idea who might suit it.

“I’ve developed quite a network, which I rely on a lot when rehoming Thoroughbreds,” she said.

The trouble is that Jenny’s phone contacts are not an industry system.

She also works in a part of Sydney where riders have access to riding schools, coaches and other experienced horse people. Even there, the cost can be prohibitive.

“I am in a bit of a pocket in Sydney where there are several riding schools in this area, so people can learn the skills, but it is only becoming more expensive,” she said.

“It is not accessible for everyone. Even though it’s all here, you have to spend a fair bit of money to learn, and then to keep a horse.”

Move further away and the equation flips. Land and horse keeping can become cheaper, while access to good coaches, retrainers and support becomes thinner.

Racing Victoria’s Full Circle program offers one useful model, allowing people connected with a retired horse to register their details so they can be contacted if that horse later needs help. Racing Victoria and Racing Queensland also have community platforms for off the track owners.

Bennett thinks racing needs more opportunities for the two groups to physically mix as well.

At the first Off The Track Carnival in 2025, she saw racing people brought into an equestrian event rather than left on the other side of the fence.

“They had some spectacle events, and they ran a forum where you could watch the showjumping while listening to a speaker from the Hong Kong Jockey Club or Inglis,” she said.

“They were really trying to promote that crossover.”

Her suggestions are hardly complicated.

“You could have a team of jockeys showjump against a team of trainers, or have fashions on the field, which the racing public might be interested in coming to see.”

She would happily turn the idea around and take equestrian sport onto a racecourse.

“How good would it be to be watching the racing at Rosehill and they have a six-bar competition on the polytrack between races?” she said.

“What about fashions on the field with retired stars? Let the racing public see what happens at equestrian competitions, and maybe they will get interested. We have to get this crossover between the two industries. It is the only way forward.”

National Thoroughbred Week has already shown that people will walk into racing and breeding properties when they are invited. Pony racing has connected racing with Pony Club families. There are obvious places where the two horse worlds overlap; racing has simply not made enough use of them.

Horses do not stop at the border

There is another awkward part of the Australian system: most aftercare programs stop at state lines, while horses do not.

Each principal racing authority controls its own welfare funding and its own programs. A Thoroughbred might be bred in one state, race in two more, retire somewhere else and change hands again years later.

That becomes a problem when traceability, assistance and eligibility for programs depend on which jurisdiction happens to be dealing with the horse at the time.

TTR has previously reported on cases where retired Thoroughbreds have fallen through gaps in those systems. Other cases raising similar issues have been brought to TTR but have not been published.

In August 2025, Racing Australia and AgriFutures Australia announced national research into demand for retired Thoroughbreds and the factors affecting successful rehoming. A National Thoroughbred Aftercare Demand Strategy was intended to come out of the project.

Racing Australia’s 2025 Annual Report said the research was due to be completed by June 2026. TTR asked Racing Australia for an update and was referred to AgriFutures, which had not responded at the time of publication.

Whatever that research eventually says, there are already some fairly obvious clues in front of the industry.

A horse is more likely to stay in a good home if the owner has the skills to manage it. An owner is more likely to succeed if affordable coaching and experienced help are available. Trainers will make better placements if they can reach a broader pool of riders, and riders will make better purchases if they have a clearer idea of which horse actually suits them.

And if racing wants to change the Thoroughbred’s reputation outside racing, it probably needs to stop showing people only the top performing case studies.

Nature Strip jumping at a high level will turn heads. Eduardo carrying a mum with two kids around 60 centimetres might sell a lot more horses.