The Everest is only in its second year, yet it is has already run into more controversy than many other sporting events have in their entire lifetimes.
The controversy is not just around the issues that normally dog the racing industry, that of the evils of gambling and the treatment of racehorses. It is more the insistence of Racing NSW and the NSW government to turn it into an event that not only rivals the Melbourne Cup, but attempts to supplant it.
There are many problems with this. The major one is simple: the Everest is not the Melbourne Cup and never will be no matter how or where it is promoted.
The efforts of the NSW Racing authorities to try to promote it have led to public outrage.
The debate about whether an event such as The Everest should be promoted on the Opera House has been won by the NSW Government, but in doing so they have allied themselves with Alan Jones.
His bullying of the head of the Opera House Trust was wrong, shameful and disgusting but also unsurprising.
What was surprising was the lack of support she received, and the lack of real public condemnation of Alan Jones from anyone connected to the race.
The Everest (yeah, the one from the Opera House ads) (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
By putting the interests of the race above any kind of public decency, the Government and Racing NSW have put a stain onto The Everest itself, and made it a symbol for everything that is wrong in the Racing Industry – an industry that seems to consistently put money above morality, especially in NSW.
Sure, the Melbourne Cup and Racing Victoria get accused of the same thing, but never demonstrate it in such a public way. For example, when Winx was projected onto Flinders Street Station recently, no one batted an eyelid, because it was the celebration of a sporting achievement, not the promotion of an event.
It’s doubtful if anyone would have cared if the winner of The Everest was projected onto the Opera House either, but the racing authorities in NSW were determined to get the maximum possible coverage for the Race. And their hunger for publicity has now come back to bite them.
And now comes the news that the Racing NSW is lobbying members of the NSW Parliament, particularly the opposition, to declare ‘Everest Day’ a public holiday. This appears to be just another attempt to turn the Everest into the new Melbourne Cup. But surely the time for a horse race to be the reason for a public holiday has passed?
The specific reasons for the Melbourne Cup holiday are very much of the 19th century, and can’t be repeated now. The Melbourne Cup public holiday now has an identity separate to that of the race itself.
The Melbourne Cup. There’s nothing like it. (Photo by Graham Denholm/Getty Images for the VRC)
The Melbourne Cup can still maintain its illusion of being a race of the people, despite its prize money, and the number of recent winners owned by millionaires. The race is still a handicap, and as such, the illusion of equality is maintained – all horses are theoretically given the same chance of victory, and therefore the betting markets are more open.
This is one of the reasons why the Melbourne Cup, of all the Spring Carnival races, became the feature. The 2016 victory of Prince of Penzance has further solidified this reputation of a race which any horse can win.
The Everest has none of this. It is unashamedly a race for the rich and the upper echelons of society.
It costs $600,000 to buy a slot for the race, and you still need to find a horse on top of that (if you don’t have one already). Compared to that, the price of around $50,000 to secure a Melbourne Cup run seems like a bargain.
The ‘Weight for Age’ nature of The Everest might allow for a more ‘pure’ race, but that is at the expense of fairness. Proponents of The Everest would say that the high entry fee of the race encourages the entry only of horses that can win. That might be so, but it’s still not a fair system.
Entries into The Melbourne Cup must still be earned, and as such it still has ‘battlers’ associated with it, even if they rarely win (and even if they are not truly ‘battlers’ by any measure).
The ability to buy (and the price of) entry into The Everest means that only the super rich will ever have a chance to win it.
The Everest can never be the Melbourne Cup, and will always struggle for acceptance amongst the wider population.
The ill-timed and ill-advised fight to advertise the race on the Opera House, seemingly against the wishes of a large proportion of the population, has made the event seem like a race that caters only for the rich and the powerful.
Racing at Flemington. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Racing is already not accepted as a legitimate sport by a large minority of the population, and the actions of Alan Jones, the NSW Government, the Prime Minister and others in literally projecting a still not entirely accepted event onto a beloved icon has done little to change people’s minds on the issue.
The Melbourne Cup is accepted as part of the culture precisely because it’s more than a race, but the Everest, in promoting itself as the world’s richest race, is an event for the elite, and its place in the Australian sporting calendar will not be secure until it can shake this image.
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