This doesn’t appear in travel guides, but take it from a slightly warped expert, it works, and is worthwhile.
When arriving in a new country, the best approach for a racing-mad person is to avoid hesitation. Go straight to a racetrack. Big or small.
Of course, check into a hotel, but only to ditch luggage. No excuses after that. Grab the binoculars and go. There’s action to watch.
So it went for one Daily Racing Form correspondent on a recent Wednesday earlier this month, bouncing off a 767 Dreamliner from Los Angeles on an inaugural journey to Sydney, Australia.
The flight landed at 7 a.m. First post time at Hawkesbury Racecourse, an hour northwest of Sydney, was 12:50 p.m.
There was ample time to arrive via train, find an ancient self-service betting machine and proceed to buy a win ticket on the wrong horse. The wrong horse won at 5-1.
Welcome to Australia, you lucky klutz.
The nine-day journey coincided with a week without daytime Thoroughbred racing in California, an ideal time to explore Sydney – its famous opera house and Taronga Zoo were two standouts – as well as to satisfy a decades-old curiosity about how racing is presented 7,500 miles from the American West Coast.
:: Get free past performances, analysis, and picks for Australian racing
A visit to tiny Hawkesbury and, days later, Kembla Grange south of Sydney, as well as the city tracks Royal Randwick and Warwick Farm provided reminders of how different the sport can be.
Why Australia? Why not, particularly with racing’s national popularity, and focus on turf racing, a personal preference.
Women caused this fascination, or more specifically, fillies and mares. Since the turn of the century, there have been eight fillies or mares named Horse of the Year 16 times in Australia. Another, Via Sistina, will earn the title for the current season.
The unstoppable Winx, reeled off 33 straight wins from 2015 to 2019 and was named Horse of the Year for four consecutive seasons from 2015-2016 through 2018-2019. A year after her final start in 2019, the wretched coronavirus arrived.
It’s hard to believe that five years have passed since American racing came to a near standstill in early 2020, with only seven venues operating for a time that spring – Fonner Park, Gulfstream Park, Los Alamitos, Oaklawn Park, Remington Park, Tampa Bay Downs and Will Rogers Downs. There were some days when the only racing in the United States took place at Fonner Park in Grand Island, Neb. and Will Rogers Downs in Claremore, Okla.
Australia never stopped. With the 17-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Sydney, and not much else to do in a largely closed society, prime time television in California led to opportunities to follow racing from the next afternoon in Australia, even though the grandstands were empty.
It was a good time to deliver articles about Australia’s best races to American readers, and plenty of time for deeper study of the country’s racing landscape: the big venues and the small, the horses, and the people behind them.
It was the time of Verry Ellegant, the brilliant New Zealand-bred filly. Less than three weeks after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus an international pandemic, Verry Ellegant won the third Group 1 race of her career in the Tancred Stakes at an empty Rosehill Gardens Racecourse in Sydney.
By the time her career ended in the fall of 2022, she would win eight more Group 1 races, including the 2021 Melbourne Cup before a miniscule crowd of 10,000, all required to show proof of vaccination. Verry Ellegant was Horse of the Year for the 2020-2021 season.
The idea for this month’s road trip was launched in those years.
Get ye down there. It was overdue.
Hawkesbury’s tiny facility and solid program were a contrast to a big-city venue such as Randwick, which ran a 10-race program consisting entirely of stakes on April 12, including four consecutive Group 1 races. The racing was of such high quality that the afternoon at Randwick seemed like a Breeders’ Cup Day. The action unfolded so rapidly it was difficult to reflect on the results of one big race before the next field had reached the gate.
Via Sistina was the star at Randwick, equaling Winx’s record from 2018-2019 with a seventh Group 1 win of the current season in the $3.08 million Queen Elizabeth Stakes against males at 1 1/4 miles.
Via Sistina did not pay much as the even-money favorite, but the performance was worth the journey. She did make a convenient key selection in an unsuccessful Quaddie, or pick four, a popular bet in Australia.
Randwick, a world-class facility set in the middle of Sydney, sprawls across a vast property with several grandstands looking out over a main turf course 1 3/8 miles in circumference. Some buildings date to the late 19th century. Others have been built in the last decade.
For racegoers, one of the biggest differences between racing in Australia and the United States are the massive stables where runners are housed in the hours before racing. No exceptions allowed. The space is open to the public to amble through and observe scores of runners in various states of preparation, always attended to by stable staff.
This was the policy at all tracks visited, big or small. Horses are saddled in that space before being walked to a paddock, or mounting yard.
Australian racing has oncourse bookmakers, though far fewer than Britain, and a pari-mutuel system with many bets similar to North American tracks, including exactas, trifectas, and superfectas, known as first four. In that regard, betting was like being at home.
Winning requires patience. Speaking from experience, a sportswriter can blast through a piece of pizza before a race is made official.
While Randwick drew the largest crowd of four Sydney-area tracks visited, the energy at tiny Kembla Grange on a weekday was infectious. The venue, three miles from the ocean, has a one-mile handicap worth approximately $640,000 each November, known as The Gong, and a Group 3 race in March, but is otherwise the sort of venue where a big stable may take a young or inexperienced horse for a maiden or allowance race.
Who knows? Maybe the 2-year-old filly Akaysha, the 8-1 winner of a five-furlong maiden race in her debut on April 15 will become a recognizable name. She is out of Zingaling, a two-time stakes winner and a full sister to the active stakes winner Ka Bling.
For one traveler, Akaysha’s win ended plans for an early retirement pegged to an investment in the early Quaddie. Three races later, in another sprint for maidens, a bet in the late Quaddie went up in dust when favored Oui Oui Oui caught 9-2 key selection Me Me in the final strides.
Kembla Grange exceeded expectations, with a grandstand that provided more than sufficient viewing and a solid group of Sydney-based riders in attendance.
Four jockeys who rode in the Melbourne Cup last November – Winona Costin, Rachel King, Kerrin McEvoy, and Tyler Schiller – had mounts that day. King, McEvoy, and Schiller were in action the following day at Warwick Farm, along with national leading rider James McDonald.
JMac, as McDonald is known, is closely allied with leading trainer Chris Waller, and often has the pick of top mounts each week. As of Tuesday, there were eight other riders in Australia who had won more races than McDonald since the current season began last August, but few were anywhere near his earnings mark of the equivalent of approximately $19.2 million in American dollars.
By the time a return flight to California beckoned late last week, racing in Sydney was headed back to Randwick for a Saturday program with two Group 1 stakes. How convenient that the flight to LAX touched down well before those races were run, ample time to settle in front of the television and catch the action.
Five years ago, Australian racing provided a link to the sport at a grim time. Now catching a few races from Australia on a California evening has become commonplace.
What is the statute of limitations on fulfilling pandemic-related goals, those bucket list items we all promised to do?
Hope five years is within the limit. Doubt five more years will pass before a return journey to Australia.
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.