Racing chair’s Everest plans
NEW Racing Victoria chairman Brian Kruger said they would consider running a race along the lines of Sydney’s The Everest in the future.
Kruger said if such a race could add value to racing in Victoria “then we’ll look at it”.
He also said despite hearing how successful Racing NSW was, RV was in front of it on all the numbers he looked at.
“Whether it’s prize money, whether it’s attendance, whether it’s ownership, whether it’s the number of people engaging or viewing the sport or starters per race, we’re on very solid ground,” Kruger said.
He expressed disappointment in Racing NSW’s decision to run an advertisement in The Australian on Melbourne Cup Day saying The Everest was Australia’s greatest race.
“From my point of view I thought it was a sad reflection on Racing NSW to chose to promote their race by attempting to denigrate the Melbourne Cup. It’s certainly not something we’d do,” he said on RSN yesterday morning.
Kruger said he was going to discuss with the integrity department whether they needed more resources for the Lovani inquiry which was going “to take months and not a few weeks to complete” but he doesn’t want it to drag on.
“We will be doing this as quickly as possible but we don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the investigation,” Kruger said.
The chairman was “extremely confident” that no RV employee had leaked information about who had been interviewed by stewards. He also defended his chief executive Giles Thompson stating that he had given their integrity department full support and last year RV spent $8 million in this area which was more than another racing or sporting organisation.
Kruger also said that the recent resignation of the general manager of integrity, Dayle Brown had nothing to do with a lack of support from the RV board.
He said Brown had left to pursue another opportunity as deputy chief executive of Greyhound Racing NSW.
Kruger said he would like participants who “had brain fades” such as Dylan Caboche who punched a horse last week to be dealt harsher punishments.
“We need to make sure penalties for such things which represent a poor image are dealt with severely.”
Kruger said there were too many breaches of the whip rule and that possibly jockeys needed bigger penalties if they flouted it.