Review to come for All-Star Mile
HAILED as a rousing success, the All-Star Mile will undergo a thorough review with likely adjustments to horse eligibility and voting restrictions.
The world’s richest mile will be staged at Caulfield next autumn after Mystic Journey won the inaugural running at Flemington on Saturday.
Watched by a crowd of 16,059, the All-Star Mile attracted what is believed to be phenomenal betting turnover.
While figures are yet to be released, it is understood turnover on the race was similar to that of established features such as the Caulfield Guineas and Kennedy Mile.
Logistically, Racing Victoria’s Greg Carpenter is forecasting subtle changes, while protecting the race’s “Cinderella” flavour.
“We’ve been very open and transparent through the whole journey that we launched off a short runway,” he said.
“We’ll probably take a lot of learnings out of the original All-Star Mile.
“A lot of the conversation on the way through was around the original benchmark rating (70) for horses to get into the race. There’s no doubt that we’ll address that but there’s no doubt there’s been enormous conversation around not taking the Cinderella story element out of it.
“But we will certainly look at the minimum rating.”
Another issue for officials to consider relates to horses voted into the field by public ballot despite having ordinary form.
On Saturday, Urban Ruler – which is raced by a large and enthusiastic syndicate – unsuccessfully attempted to end a 15race losing streak against Group 1 performers.
He finished last. Carpenter said the rating benchmark was “probably more problematic for older horses than it is for three-year-olds.”
“We’ll probably look at tinkering the rating for the older horses, maybe putting in requirements about minimum performances in a certain period before the race,” he said.
RV is likely to broaden the voting eligibility beyond Australia.
“Without question we got a lot of pushback from our friends in New Zealand about having their horses nominated and then they were locked out of the voting process,” he said.
“So as far as the review of the voting process, I’m determined – if we can – to at least extend that to New Zealand, if not the world.
“Whether or not the voting period was too long at four weeks, I thought that originally but I think it worked out pretty well.”