This was published 9 months ago
‘Stop playing by the rules’: Emails reveal secret plot to fight Racing NSW
The fallout between NSW and Victoria in the battle for horse racing supremacy has been laid bare, with emails showing the former chairman of Racing Victoria was so incensed by a change to a group 1 race in Sydney he said his regulator should “stop playing by the rules and start firing some real bullets”.
Evidence tabled before the NSW Supreme Court included an email from Brian Kruger, the former chairman of Racing Victoria, to then chief executive Giles Thompson two days after Racing NSW announced last year it had moved its Spring Champion Stakes back a fortnight in spring.
It meant the race for three-year-old horses over 2000 metres would be held on the same day as the Cox Plate and just a week before the Victoria Derby, run over 2500 metres and also for three-year-olds.
In a submission made by Racing NSW’s barrister Oliver Jones to Justice Kelly Rees on Wednesday, Kruger implored Racing Victoria to fight back against Sydney’s evolving spring carnival, which had whittled away Victoria’s monopoly with the introduction of races like The Everest and Golden Eagle.
“I think it’s time we stop playing by the rules and start firing some real bullets,” Kruger wrote to Thompson. “Me, you and the team need to start getting creative and aggressive. We need more of that type of thinking – and fast.”
Kruger’s email came less than an hour after then Racing Australia chairman John Messara had written to Racing NSW chairman Russell Balding warning the Spring Champion Stakes date change “may affect the race’s status as group 1”.
The Spring Champion Stakes caused consternation within the Racing Victoria leadership.Credit: Getty
The court heard Kruger, who quit in June as Racing Victoria chairman, later emailed Hong Kong Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, also the chairman of the Asian Racing Federation, to outline concerns over the Spring Champion Stakes shift.
Racing NSW has launched legal action against Racing Victoria and other principal racing authorities – Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania – over what it alleges was a secret plan to either abolish their power of veto on Racing Australia, or set up a new entity without them.
It has so far asked for preliminary discovery of documents to ascertain whether it can escalate an anti-competitive case.
The court heard a conversation between Balding and Racing Victoria director Greg Nichols took place on July 6 last year when the Racing NSW chairman challenged Nichols on whether Victoria and other states had been plotting to break away from NSW, and raised the prospect of litigation.
Oliver Jones said Nichols told Balding: “The action of collusion was laughable”.
“These are people who have been having a dispute for a very long time about everything,” Racing Victoria’s barrister Tim Maxwell said. “It’s a long-running dispute between the parties that involves litigation or the threat of litigation between the parties.”
The court also heard a claim that Racing Victoria’s Nichols and chief executive Andrew Jones didn’t immediately disclose WhatsApp messages in a group chat called “Plan B” with representatives of other states.
Despite a raft of affidavits being tendered to the court on Wednesday, Oliver Jones argued for an amended motion for Nichols and Andrew Jones to provide direct affidavits themselves over concerns about the WhatsApp exchange and whether Nichols immediately provided emails from his Racing Australia account.
Oliver Jones said the WhatsApp messages were supplied by officials from Racing and Wagering Western Australia, but both Nichols and Andrew Jones didn’t immediately provide the communication, in what he labelled a case of “collective and co-incidental amnesia”.
“Objectively [Nichols] forgot a WhatsApp group he created,” Oliver Jones told the court. “It’s unlikely he would have forgotten this.
“If that’s what they’re going to say, they should say it in direct evidence in the form of an affidavit. We do require a proper explanation and how the error occurred and whether there’s anything else.”
But Maxwell said any ruling that would require further affidavits on behalf of his clients would be “unacceptable and a waste of everyone’s time and resources” after acceding to Racing NSW’s requests for documents to be produced on Wednesday.
Maxwell said Racing Victoria had already involved 19 employees sifting through 32,000 documents for the proceedings.
“We knew it was a tight timeframe, but we saw it as a sensible approach, so we pulled out all the stops,” he said.
Balding will be replaced as Racing NSW chairman later this month after contentious legislation to extend his term on the board to an unprecedented 14 years was torpedoed in NSW parliament last week. It was to be the third time he was to have his tenure as a director extended.
Messara, who walked away from Racing Australia after being unable to break the impasse between NSW and Victoria, was one of a number of prominent racing identities, including Katie Page and Gai Waterhouse, to publicly voice opposition to Balding’s time being extended.
The hearing continues.
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