The unintended consequences of racing's foal declaration crackdown

Cover photo courtesy of The Image Is Everything

Four of the 13 horses destroyed in the Berkeley Park Stud case were ineligible to race. Two had outstanding foal ownership declarations, while two had no mare returns lodged for their dams.

There is no evidence establishing that those registration issues contributed to the horses’ deaths. Their circumstances do, however, raise questions about the consequences of preventing a Thoroughbred from pursuing the racing career for which it was bred.

Since August 2025, Racing Australia has enforced stricter penalties for late foal ownership declarations, with horses automatically barred from racing when paperwork is lodged more than 60 days after birth, unless an appeal succeeds.

The measures were introduced to improve horse welfare and traceability. But breeders caught by the rules have described months of uncertainty, mounting costs and, in some cases, decisions to leave breeding altogether.

Among them is long-time owner and breeder Neill Ross, whose three-year-old gelding has undergone veterinary treatment and been prepared for a racing career that remains on hold because of a late declaration.

After an unsuccessful appeal, Ross has been offered one final opportunity to lift the embargo: pay $2500.

He says the experience has convinced him never to breed another Thoroughbred.

The timeline

In the Australian Rules of Racing, AR285, AR286, and AR287 set out the responsibilities for a breeder or their appointed agent to ensure the foal ownership declaration is submitted in a timely manner. The rulebook emphasises that doing so ensures traceability for each horse bred in Australia.

In early July 2025, Racing Australia sent out a media release drawing a line in the sand; from the beginning of August 2025, foal ownership declarations that were lodged more than 60 days after birth would still be accepted into the stud book, but the horse would be rendered ineligible to race in Australia. This ban was also adopted by New Zealand in the months later.

There would be the option to appeal the embargo, but at the cost of a $500 appeal deposit, at which point an independent adjudicator would review each appeal on a case by case basis. If the appeal was accepted, the bonus would be refunded less a $360 late fee. If it was denied, the doors to a racing career in Australasia were effectively shut.

At the time, Racing Australia acknowledged that the embargo was a serious consequence for a Thoroughbred breeder, but stated that “enforcement of the Rules is paramount to ensuring ongoing improvements in horse welfare and traceability”.

In late March 2026, Racing Australia extended an amnesty to foals born in the 2024 and 2025 breeding seasons who were subject to embargoes. Breeders were given two weeks to submit declarations for those two seasons, at which point they would only be subject to late fees and would avoid the embargo or appeal process.

“The lodgement of the Foal Ownership Declaration is an important part of our overall horse traceability responsibilities and it is important that owners and breeders adhere to the specific Australian Rules of Racing that cover this,” said Racing Australia Chairman Rob Rorrison, adding that he had been pleased to see a 90% reduction in the volume of late declarations for the 2025 season.

However, horses born within those two seasons were not the only ones subject to embargos. In a release published in September, Racing Australia shared that there were still 102 horses embargoed as a result of the ruling; 28 were born in seasons that had the amnesty, while the remaining 74 were born earlier, including 47 foals born in 2023. Appeals had already been submitted for 61 of those horses.

The same press release noted that a number of appeals had been rejected as appellants “did not establish special or exceptional circumstances” as to why their lodgements were delayed. Racing Australia was offering those appellants one final option to reinstate their horses; for appeals lodged before November 13 that are denied, owners will have 30 days to pay a $2500 fee, which will lift the embargo. The fee would be routed into equine welfare.

“Our message has been very clear as to how serious an issue this is for the industry,” Rorrison said. “This final option to lift the embargo will only be offered this year, being the initial season of strict enforcement of these rules and remains conditional on an appeal, including all of the information that is required under the Appeal Guidelines being lodged.”

After that date, there will be no further leniency, and some horses may find the door to racing shut on them forever.

The case study

One of the horses facing the final deadline belongs to long-time breeder and owner Neill Ross, who liked Holy Water (NZ) (Sacred Falls {NZ}) enough in her brief training career to purchase her as a broodmare when the time came. He bred three foals from her before her untimely passing earlier this year.

A miscommunication between Ross and the agistment property where his mare lived led to late foal ownership declarations for both Holy Water’s 2023 and 2024 foals. The latter was covered by the amnesty in April, but the 3-year-old colt by Denman was not.

Ross submitted appeals for his horses in mid December, and it wasn’t until the middle of March where Racing Australia requested further information on the case ahead of their first amnesty. A further month transpired before Ross received notification that the appeal for the 2023 foal was with the independent barrister, and three days later, he was informed that his appeal had been rejected. An administrative error did not make the cut as “exceptional circumstances” and there was no further provision.

While waiting for the results of his appeal, Ross had the colt gelded and a screw put in a cyst in his stifle, with further surgery scheduled to remove bone chips that might hinder his potential racing career. Ross provided the information of the gelding’s veterinary care and general upkeep as part of his appeal case.

The horse was broken in, with the hope that Ross would be able to get the embargo overturned and send him to Danielle Seib to train. He had gathered a group of friends and colleagues to come into the horse’s ownership - if the gelding was permitted to go to the track at all.

But the appeal denial put the brakes on all progress.

“If I had been offered a fine back in April, I would have simply paid it, but the main problem for me now is the moving of the goal posts,” Ross said.

“I don’t understand how I can make the same error 365 days apart and one is treated completely differently, and why we are being fined so heavily now. It feels draconian.”

Instead of having the slate wiped clean in April’s initial amnesty - which came with only a late fee of $360 - a simple administrative error has threatened the entire primary career of Ross’s gelding, and the only option that remained was a fee almost seven times what Ross paid for his 2-year-old.

In a letter sent to Ross in late September, Racing Australia CEO Paul Eriksson called the $2500 fee “perfectly reasonable when measured against the cost of breeding and care of the horse”, and likened it to the fine for driving an unregistered light vehicle on the road.

“(It is also proportionate to) the threat to the integrity and reputation of racing should an adverse welfare matter come to light with a foal that is not registered,” he said.

Ross has expressed his distaste with the process to the governing body and to Racing NSW, the jurisdiction in which he breeds and resides, but says he has received little support - if anything, he has felt dismissed by responses from Racing Australia body members. The case has occupied a lot of his time and energy, so to arrive in November with a horse still ineligible to race and little sympathy for his plight is an exhausting prospect.

Despite the assertion that the embargo has been introduced in the interests of horse welfare, Ross says that no one has been to assess the welfare of his gelding.

His word has been sufficient evidence so far. And while Ross asserts that his horse has continued to receive a high standard of care, that there has been no physical follow-up contradicts the welfare reasoning.

In the months following Holy Water’s passing and considering the events that have unfolded with her 3-year-old, Ross has decided he won’t be replacing her.

“These are the last Thoroughbreds I will ever breed,” he said. “I might race others, but I won’t breed any more. I feel like I have been treated like a criminal.

“It has left a very sour taste in my mouth for an industry I have been involved in all my life.”

The plea

Ross has not been alone in facing this process. There are breeders throughout the country who have faced the same situation, and their approaches impact more than just the horses they directly own.

Ross walks away from the industry and takes with him another foal from an already dwindling foal crop, the service fee and the mare trade that took to create that foal, and the financial contribution in agistment and training through a horse’s life. Others are also choosing not to breed, and TTR is aware of cases where stud owners have been left with tens of thousands in unpaid bills where clients have walked away and deserted mares with embargoed foals.

TTR is also aware of one case of an embargoed yearling being given away on Facebook, before Racing Australia announced the first amnesty.

“The amnesties have helped resolve existing cases, but they haven't fixed the underlying problem,” said Andrew Hore-Lacy, CEO of TBA & Aushorse.

“We're already seeing new cases involving 2026 foals whose declarations have missed the deadline. We cannot have a system where an administrative oversight can jeopardise a horse's entire future, regardless of the circumstances.”

And if that oversight can be overturned with a fee, however steep, why does it deserve such a serious punishment in the first place?

“We all want a regulatory framework that puts the welfare of the horse first,” Hore-Lacy said. “But we need to ask some difficult questions about what happens when the rules themselves leave owners and breeders with fewer options to secure a good outcome for their horses.

“When an owner is waiting months for an appeal decision while continuing to incur thousands of dollars in costs, something isn't working. People in our industry have every right to expect a system that is fair, proportionate and timely.”

Two of the Berkeley Park Stud horses had late foal declarations and two were unregistered, as their dams did not have completed mare returns. And while we can’t know the full extent of the circumstances leading to what happened to them, months of waiting to see if embargoes could be lifted and the further costs of overturning an appeal that is denied would only increase anyone’s burden.

We need only look at falling covering numbers and the declining foal crop, the manner of trade in the market’s middle to bottom end, and the global economy’s impact on overheads to understand that one more burden on breeders is not needed.

Ultimately, it is the innocent horse that pays the price.