The Everest: Explained

The racetrack is a melting pot of society, a place where everyone is welcome, but where the battler does his best out the back while the top end of town enjoys the spoils. And that’s where The Everest comes in. It harnesses all of those people, and makes them equals.

The Everest is the brainchild of Racing NSW boss Peter V’landys, the nation’s most astute sports administrator, and throws out all of racing’s conventions and traditions.

Under a 100-year-old “Gentleman’s Agreement”, Melbourne traditionally enjoys the fruits of the Spring Carnival, culminating in the big three race days of the Caulfield Cup, the Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup.

For its end, Sydney lays claim to the Autumn period through Easter.

But, the Spring is the big one. Football’s over, cricket hasn’t started. The sporting calendar needs filling and Melbourne’s Spring Carnival has boomed.

Then along comes The Everest at Royal Randwick. Run smack bang in the middle of October, it has hijacked the Spring Carnival from Victoria through the amount of prizemoney and the ingenious idea.

This is why it’s ingenious. Every horse race is the same. It is put on by a race club, you enter your horse, and you win the offered prizemoney. From $10,000 maidens to $5 million Melbourne Cups. The prizemoney is fuelled by wagering.

But the Everest is completely different. Twelve “slots”, or positions, in the race are sold to the industry’s multi-million dollar players for $600,000 each.

So, times 12, that’s $7.2 million. With wagering receipts, the prizemoney was bumped up to $10 million for last year’s inaugural race. This year, it will be $13 million.

It dwarfs the prize money offered by the Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate and Golden Slipper and is the richest turf race on the planet.

Once you pay, you can enter any horse you want. You don’t have to qualify – the place in the race is yours.

V’landys’ idea to make the rich pay so much for a slot was initially ridiculed as “just another event for the rich of the industry”.

But as it turned out, just because the rich pay the money doesn’t mean they have a horse fast enough to compete. Which means slot owners are forced to negotiate with the owners of fast horses to enter their horses.

Last year’s winner Redzel was a syndicated horse owned by a group of 20 people which included police officers, school teachers, a doctor, taxi driver, concreter, electrician, pharmacist and a security guard.

Bloodstock guru James Harron, a huge industry figure, owned a slot, but didn’t have a horse of his own good enough to win it. So he negotiated a split of the prize money with the owners of Redzel, and they took the slot. History was made and the copper etc shared the $5.8 million first prize with Harron.

It’s like Robin Hood. The rich are handing over cash to the battlers. Ingenious.