THE highlight of the year was undoubtedly Kildare man Robbie Dolan producing Knight’s Choice between horses in the final furlong of the Group 1 Melbourne Cup and make headlines all over the world.

The gelding trained by John Symons and Sheila Laxon started at 90/1 as the European raiders fell short, with Absurde faring best in fourth for Willie Mullins.

The rest of the season was highlighted by two mares.

Bursting onto the scene, Pride Of Jenni won a pair of Group 1’s seven days apart at the 2023 Melbourne Cup carnival.

The tearaway Pride Of Dubai mare became synonymous with Declan Bates, the pair thrilling racegoers with their ‘catch me if you can’ attitude which got the turnstiles ticking as the ‘once a year’ fans embraced the mare in the purple and blue diamonds.

At Sydney’s Championships, she again dominated, tearing up a high-class field to win the A$5 million Group 1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes by seven lengths. The runner-up at Randwick in April was Via Sistina, one of Yulong Farm’s ‘big buys’ (2.7million guineas) from international sales.

A winner once more in the Group 2 Feehan Stakes, sadly Pride Of Jenni bled and was retired following the VRC Champions Mile, though by now the baton had well and truly passed to Via Sistina.

From August, she started in five Group 1 races for four wins, her only hiccup, fifth on a heavy track at Flemington in the Makybe Diva Stakes.

She won the Winx Stakes and Turnbull Stakes before obliterating the field in the Cox Plate and applying a three-length exclamation mark in the Champion Stakes on the final day of the Melbourne Cup carnival.

Via Sistina may well return to Royal Ascot where Oisin Murphy guided her to second in the 2023 Champion Stakes. As Kerrin McEvoy remarked after he won the Winx Stakes on her; “The world is her oyster now.”

The age of mega stables

AUSTRALIA has been witnessing the rise of ‘mega stables’ over the past decade. Chris Waller recently and then Ciaron Maher who took on a huge expansion following the disqualification of Darren Weir.

The first of this kind of trainer in Australia was arguably Weir, who in 2017/2018, his final full season, had nearly 700 more runners than any other trainer with 3,177 starters.

Currently Australia’s leading trainer for the season just completed was Ciaron Maher with 343 winners from 2,253 starters, runner-up was Chris Waller with 292 winners from 2,195 starters.

Respectively, they banked A$51,496,610 and $51,669,540 in prize money. The stable with the third most runners was Annabel Neasham with 1,335, while Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott banked the third most prize money in the country, $30,007,560 earned from 937 runners.

Other jurisdictions deal with ‘mega stables’ in different ways. Japan has a 78-horse cap per trainer, Hong Kong can limit a trainer’s influence through the allocation of a finite amount of stables.

Horse Racing Ireland proposed conducting 60 races for trainers of less than 50 National Hunt winners in either of the previous two seasons.

Australian jurisdictions, at present, appear happy with the status quo, though as former Australian Trainers Association chief executive Andrew Nicholl explains: “Where do you start? It’s a very complex subject,” he said. “What happens if Maher goes to 1,500 and Waller to 1,000? Is the issue becoming more acute? The answer is yes.

Owners aren’t there

“Wages, feed, rent, service providers, insurance, they’ve gone through the roof. Many (trainers) are just hanging in there and the owners aren’t there. Those that are, are going to the really big stables.

“When you’ve got someone like Maher and all his success and his science, why would you race a horse with someone who trains on a country sand track with occasional use of the grass?”

Current searches of racing administration websites show that four stables have 1,688 named horses on their books. The numbers for Ciaron Maher, Chris Waller, Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, and Annabel Neasham and Rob Archibald are respectively 480, 469, 399 and 340, though that number is likely higher when unnamed horses are taken into account.

Conversely, 55-year-old Group 2-winning trainer Mark Minervini, who has 16 boxes at Newcastle, has his point of difference.

“A lot of our clients have felt intimidated at the bigger stables, they don’t feel like they can pick up the phone and talk to the trainer about the horse,” says Minervini.

“We have picked up a lot of clients from those bigger stables and syndicators because of the communication problems owners have had. They feel uncomfortable.

“I am not Chris Waller, or John Hawkes, but what I do pride myself on is communication. If you call me and I don’t answer, I promise I will call you back.”

THE buck stops with McDonald! The 32-year-old James McDonald continues to dominate racing in Australia.

Last season he rode 120 winners across Australia from 491 rides, his mounts banking A$35.4 million.

In Sydney, he won his sixth consecutive Sydney jockeys’ premiership, to match the efforts of racing legends Ron Quinton and George Moore for consecutive sequences.

This season he already holds a 17-winner lead after 45 victories. To top off his calendar year, he broke his own record for most wins at the Melbourne Cup Carnival to finish with 11 winners over the four days, bettering the 10 he rode in 2021, and claiming a fourth-straight Ron Hutchinson Award as the leading jockey for the Melbourne Cup Carnival.

His winning ride on Via Sistina in the Cox Plate also brought up his 100th Group 1 win, just 16 years after his first in the New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes aboard Special Mission.

WHILE Via Sistina is arguably the pundits’ pin-up, and rightly so, Ceolwulf is arguably the most exciting prospect, in training.

The four-year-old Tavistock gelding, trained by Joe Pride, came of age during the Sydney spring. Resuming in August with one win and four placings from nine starts that included seconds in the Australian Derby and Rosehill Guineas, Ceolwulf started twice in August for a win and a miss before he exploded into form three weeks later.

Second in the Group 3 Kingstown Town Stakes, he then dominated in a pair of Group 1’s over the Randwick mile, winning the Epsom before landing the A$5 million King Charles III Stakes.

“I always wanted to win the Cox Plate and he’s my Cox Plate horse. I’ll wait a year,” said Joe Pride before sending Ceolwulf to the paddock.

RACEDAY attendees outside of major carnivals have declined over the past decade as the diverse trends of leisure time often preclude regular attendance of horse racing.

The familiar tropes of time-poor people and cost of living pressures play their part, which emphasises the importance of television broadcasts and social media engagement to connect to established, new and emerging audiences.

This year’s Melbourne Cup carnival saw over 285,000 people attend this year, 20,000 more than last year and the highest mark since 2018, though the likelihood of the plus 100,000 crowds experienced through the 2000’s seems remote.

In Sydney, the view is far more buoyant, with a record Everest crowd of over 49,000 entrenching the seven-year-old event in the schedule of Sydney.

“We are trying to grow the sport so we have to find ways to increase the crowd capacity,” said Australian Turf Club chairman Peter McGauran.

NO doubt the loss of the season was the Chris Waller-trained Riff Rocket who succumbed to complications following colic surgery. By the Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, Riff Rocket was unplaced twice in 12 starts, having won seven.

The 2023 Victoria Derby winner doubled up in Sydney winning this year’s Rosehill Guineas and the Australian Derby, Chris Waller describing his three-year-old season as; “..nothing short of remarkable”.

Mr Brightside a Killer

Any list of equine achievements is incomplete without mention of Mr Brightside.

He races like a throwback to Australian gallopers of old; durable, hard-working geldings who give 100% each time they step out.

Not surprisingly he is a stable favourite of the most recent iteration of Lindsay Park; Ben, JD and Will Hayes. “He’s won seven (now eight) Group 1’s, an All-Star Mile, he’s sixth on the all-time money earners’ list (A$16.4 million), not many horses can do that.

“He handles wet tracks, handles good tracks, handles fast tempos, he’s bombproof and they’re very hard to find,” said Ben Hayes in September.