The international invaders are coming

In simple, you don't improve it. You play it. Get a stayer of your own choice and take on the international runners. Put your money where your mouth is. Tell the trainer what you want and hope that he takes the money and does it for you. (for many people what I am saying is try to sell stayers to owners.) Every one of your solutions are ignorant of the owner's position except solution 5, which omits the owner. I cannot see the business organics to your points. Solution 5 is just a little circle of money game. The calendar has not changed much over 30 years. More owner-trainers is the answer. (I note Andrew Parramore running 2nd at Grafton on the 11th of this month with Power Receiver). The industry is too nasty against the small players. If you grabbed 6 yearling stayers, got a trainers ticket, got a farm and training track, put in 5 years of effort etc, then the whole industry would jump you and kick your teeth in (punters too). It is currently a thug's game to grab money. Would we really love to see owner-trainers ruling the turf? Are we only happy to praise the indepenent trainer? Aphorism will not change the power of money, and there's plenty of talk in horse racing right now to scare off any keen owner.

Drew, I agree with you that 99.9% of syndicates screw owners over and they do their money cold. Some enter this knowingly and are willing to cough up their hard earned to potentially "live the dream", which you and I both know very, very rarely happens, some are less informed. I acknowledge that owners are the life blood of the industry, with no horses we have no races, however it is also their perogative how they spend their money - no one is holding a gun to their head to make them buy in. All this aside you still haven't said how you would improve the quality of our stayers .Do you think it is the lack of suitable races, our training methods, or the inferiority of our breed that is the problem, because at the moment Euro imported horses are not only cleaning up our Cups, but also the run of the mill weekly staying events (see Chris Waller). So apart from owner and syndicating problems, how do we make the Aussie Stayer competitive in the long term

Fair enough corlette, How to fix it: - be selective of a trainer's efforts, skills, management of staff and desire to satisfy the owners and funders. - be recognising of the real committment of an owner who has huge ongoing expenses to keep horses alive. - be weary of syndicators. They are the worst of the fast grab players. When they lump horses over to syndicates, it is little wonder that those horses have short careers. - be accepting that there are only a certain number of G1,2,3 races to be won. Someone will take the prize, and things are not as variable and decaying as writers assert. If anyone rapes anything for a short term gain then the long term is often damaged. The moment an investment is seen by an owner is the moment a salesperson comes in for the abomination. Tradition has always kept salespersons in a corner. They are the sly talking no-hopers. Commission on sales has driven horse racing for too long. If you ask me, the industry's main game is "take a potential owner for a ride". The vast majority of salespersons don't own anything, yet they have been in the game long enough to baffle an investor. Some own 10% of a horse, just to show their loyalty. The owner/breeder is not selling; he knows that it's a salesperson's frenzy that makes anything move. Commission is a must for a sale to occur. Sales commissions are the death of horse racing.

Dear Drew, I think you are missing the point of the article, which is how do we improve the quality of Australian stayers. You have over analysed problem 2 instead of taking in it's point which is at present there is more incentive to breed and aim horses towards the quick return 2yo and 3yo sprint races and then retire them. Instead of being critical to a way a point has been worded, why don't you offer your thoughts on how you would improve the quality of Australian staying horses. No mention of Gai the mighty trainer,or Singo's native tribal tune - just forward what you would do to fix the problem. Unless that is you are one of those with their head in the sand who don't recognize our stayers are inferior!

Dear Tony Edser, Your problem 2 says that trainers breed. Do they? Do we encourage owner-trainers? Do we see each entity as isolated operations? ie breeders, trainers, owners. Does a trainer make the success story for a breed to succeed? The mighty trainer can tune up everything. If you pay top dollar with Gai then you have also bought your breeding boost. Conflict of interest has been mentioned many times from Singo's native tribal tune. Perhaps 'look closer' at all arms of the main body.

Couldn't agree more . The only way locally bred horses can compete in the future big Cups is to encourage breeders to produce more quality stayers with European bloodlines, which of course won't happen while there is such a distinct bias towards sprinting and mile races. Since the year 2000 only five Australian or New Zealand bred horses have won the Melbourne Cup, (Makybe Diva and Green Moon are English bred so don't count), and the year Efficient won in 2007 Equine Influenza decimated the final field. The alarm bells should be ringing, but while ever the is such a ridiculous amount of prize money going into 2yo and early 3yo sprint racing there is no incentive for the breeders to change. We bleed when foreign horses win the Cup but what are we doing to stop it. Better race day structure and prize money incentives for stayers to keep our best horses racing would be a start.