Racehorse TALK

from racingandsports

Wednesday, 29 April 2009: Racing NSW may have unwittingly deepened the rift with Hong Kong and other racing juridictions created by the Chris Munce affair by taking on Tabcorp as sponsor of next year's Asian Racing Conference to be held in Sydney.

The Asian Racing Federation conference takes place at intervals of around 18 months with more than 200 delegates from more than 15 racing countries gathering to discuss matters of collective importance in an open forum. The agenda features high profile international guest speakers, workshops and lavish social events.

Past conferences have always been staged without the host body taking on commercial sponsorships that could create possible conflicts of interest.

However, in a move that threatens to exacerbate the rift created by the Chris Munce licensing decision, this accepted protocol has been dismissed by Racing NSW, host of the 2010 conference in Sydney in April.

Racing NSW has advertised Tabcorp as the corporate backer of the 33rd conference in 2010 in the first promotional material distributed to member nations.

In Hong Kong the commercial involvement of Tabcorp in the conference has already been labelled by local media as being in breach of ARF protocol, another indication of the continuing ill-feeling over the decision of Racing NSW to issue disqualified jockey Chris Munce with a riding licence.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club and other Asian Racing Federation members reacted angrily last year when Racing NSW elected to issue a riding license to Munce despite having been banned from riding for 20 months by Hong Kong stewards for his part in the highly-publicised "tips for bets" case that landed the jockey a lengthy jail term.

The HKJC was critical of Racing NSW choosing to ignore an international agreement covering the reciprocation of penalties by allowing Munce to ride in NSW.

Munce has only another four months of his Hong Kong stewards penalty to serve but the bitter resentment the HKJC holds toward Racing NSW could spill over at the 2010 ARF conference in Sydney.

Another sign of the on-going Hong Kong resentment over the RNSW decision was seen at the recent Sydney Easter Yearling Sale when the HKJC, normally among the leading buyers, refused to attend or bid at the most important sale in the southern hemisphere.