Owning an internationally successful, multiple million dollar G1 winning horse probably changes your views on acceptance fees, but despite that I am willing to put money on the fact that an entry fee of $800,000 may have made even Starcraft's owners stop and think "hang on a sec - our horse may have run better on the sand track back at the Gold Coast some time ago ... but on dirt in one of the best races in the world??"

The lure of the Breeders Cup prize pool is obviously a gamble worth taking - even when $800K is a fair slice of the AUD$2,790,879 Starcraft has earned to date (the punters [or 'glass half full' individuals] amongst you will no doubt say "oh get over it!") - but no matter which way you look at it, supplementary fees at this level are certainly a hurdle for owners. It is a point well canvassed in an article penned by Bill Finley that analyses the interesting question of whether a race is TRULY international (or only billed as such) when conditions of entry bar the majority of international performers from entering unless they have a king's ransom (or hefty dose of optimism) at their disposal.

"In reality, the Breeders' Cup is a lucrative collection of eight races that attracts the best healthy horses in the U.S., plus a smattering of Europeans horses. In 21 prior runnings, there has yet to be a winner who was not based in either the U.S., Canada or Western Europe. A world championship that is not.

To be a true world championship event, the Breeders' Cup can't ignore the fact that there is very good horse racing in the rest of the world, in places like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, South Africa, Singapore, Argentina, Brazil, Chile.

But horses from those countries rarely compete in the Breeders' Cup. Breeders there are not focused on the Breeders' Cup, so they rarely nominate their stallions and foals to the series. That makes most horses racing in those countries ineligible to participate in the Breeders' Cup unless the owner pays a hefty supplementary fee, usually 20 percent of the purse. That means it's going to cost someone $800,000 to supplement to the Classic, where the winner collects $2 million."

It's an interesting article and in addition to discussing the tension between marketing, looking after local breeders, and ensuring the long term appeal of an event, it also provides some useful suggestions for the future.

Full story at the following URL.