FRESH from being crowned Victoria’s latest “Living Legend”, Anthony Butt seized the moment to throw his support behind Australia’s newest race, The TAB Eureka.
Talking on his weekly RSN radio slot with host Gareth Hall, Butt described the move to restrict the race to Australian-bred pacers only as a “genius” and insisted it would work wonders for the Australian harness racing industry.
“I think it’s fantastic,” he said. “I know there’s been some feedback from the breeders, but there’s so many positives.
“I was initially a little bit disappointed it’s not going to be for open (class) or New Zealand-bred, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a genius move.
“It’s going to do so much for the Aussie breeding industry and yearling sales are going to be up because we’ve got to source these horses from somewhere
“In Australia it’s so hard to buy a going horse, not like NZ where you can go and basically pick most horses out if you’ve got enough money. It could be genius.”
Butt also urged some of the anxious breeders to think bigger picture and focus on the potential benefits.
“I think the breeders are really going to benefit out of this,” he said. “And we’ve also got to realise there is so much money going back to America from these shuttle stallions that’s lost to the industry, so if we can claw a little bit of that back, I think it’s great.
“Administrators get knocked all the time for not doing enough or doing stuff like this and now they have, they are still getting knocked.
“I take my hat off to them. We need things like this. I hope it’s just the start and there’s more of it.”
Butt who was born and built his career in NZ, said the advent of The TAB Eureka would hugely advantage Australia at the expense of his “home” country.
“I think it’s going to have a detrimental impact on NZ because the owners aren’t going to spend the big money in NZ anymore, why would they?” he said.
“There’s even NZ trainers who specialise in buying yearlings from the NZ sales and selling them to Australians – they are going to come to Australia and buy yearlings now. And, because they are probably a little bit cheaper … the horse is going to be worth double or three times as much. There’s going to be Aussies knocking down your door to buy them.”
Harness Racing Australia is yet to announce details of when former expressions of interest for slots will open and what process they will use to decide who gets a slot.
Early indications suggest there will be many more expressions of interest than the remaining nine slots.
TAB is the only guaranteed slot holder as part of its naming rights sponsorship deal for The TAB Eureka.
Butt urged Harness Racing Australia to “think outside the square” when it came to allocating the slots.
“There sounds as though there is going to be huge demand for the slots and obviously some people are going to miss out. Maybe we should go down the path of putting on an auction for the slots? Put on a $100,000 reserve on each slot and let them have a bidding war?”
Click here to listen to Butt’s full RSN “Gait Speed” interview.
