ATA chief Andrew Nicholl warns racing needs to be more united

Australian Trainers’ Association chief executive Andrew Nicholl says the quality of racing’s biggest carnivals will suffer if the turf wars continue between Melbourne and Sydney.

• O’Shea’s wise crack at Victoria

• The Early Oil: Who to back at the track

Australian Trainers’ Association chief executive Andrew Nicholl has called for racing to take a untied front after Racing NSW’s encroachment on the Melbourne spring carnival.

This week Racing NSW announced an assault on the spring carnival, committing to several new $1 million races among $45 million in prizemoney for the six weeks.

The races include the $14 million The Everest, which will be run for the third time this year and a new race, the $7.5 million The Golden Eagle.

Bob Peters, who owns star Perth mare Arcadia Queen, will go to Sydney to contest The Everest and The Golden Eagle and bypass Melbourne.

The Everest is the showpiece event of Sydney’s revamped spring carnival. Picture: AAP

Nicholl said the ATA was disappointed the theme continued to be one of “divide and conquer”, rather than to work for benefit of racing as a whole. He said these increases were self-serving for racing in NSW, and horse racing needed a united front.

“With the competing spring options in Victoria and NSW in 2019, a question we have to ask is, will the visible quality of our race product and its appeal to the public suffer as a result?” he said.

Nicholl said other sports in Australia ran single showpiece events.

“Other sports run a single blockbuster event — the State of Origin, the Boxing Day Test ... without other games enticing away their audience,” he said.

“Yet we are doing the exact opposite, with the result that the quality of our own iconic events and carnivals will likely suffer, and at a time when we are competing hard to maintain and grow our market share of public support.”

Nicholl said, in a general sense, he applauded the increases in prizemoney, as it was the lifeblood for trainers, jockeys and owner.

“Having said that, beyond the targeted regional benefit of the stand-alone meetings scheduled for country NSW, their other Spring race additions and improvements are really more self-serving for NSW racing,” he said. “Equally, they are likely to benefit a handful of the higher end stables rather than flow to the masses.”