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Slip the Slipper into the Championships

The Golden Slipper has lost a little bit of its magic after splitting with the old HE Tancred Stakes. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
Roar Guru
6th April, 2014
34

The girlfriend dislikes me talking about the footy so I tried to excite her about the Golden Slipper. “Oh, yes I heard about the Championships”, she said as she pressed the coffee machine button.

I explained that, although the Golden Slipper is the richest two-year-old race in the world and the biggest race in Sydney, it is not part of The Championships. As I took my first sip, I wondered why the Golden Slipper is not part of The Championships?

Why isn’t our greatest race being run at our best racetrack during our biggest carnival?

Just because those Victorians run our best weight-for-age race, the Cox Plate, at the hillbilly track called Moonee Valley, that doesn’t mean we should not run the Slipper at Randwick.

Surely fields would be maximised with all available group class quality if our major races were scheduled at a gradient.

We have been running the 2400m Caulfield Cup the week before the 2000m Cox Plate well before Bart Cummings was even thought of, and then we move right up to the 3200m of the Melbourne Cup. The Australian Turf Club must have signed up the same race schedules manager.

Not only is arguably our best race not part of our best carnival, but they have scheduled the BMW over 2400m before the $4m Queen Elizabeth Stakes to be run over 2000m, which is on the same day as the 3200m Sydney Cup, making it impossible for Fiorente, Silent Achiever and It’s A Dundeel to run in both.

If the Championships was run over three or four meetings and the schedule of the big Group 1s was the Doncaster Mile, the QE (2000m), the BMW (2400m) and then the Sydney Cup (3200m), the likelihood of getting the majority of our very best performers to run in each event would be maximised.

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