Elite and Black Type Racing in Australia
The Australian Pattern Racing Committee is responsible for grading races under the auspices of the Australian Racing Board. Traditionally, until the late 1970s, a series of stakes races were recognised as black type but there was no grading of races within this grouping. Historically, handicaps have been extremely popular among Australian punters, owners and industry participants. As a result a large number of handicap races still exist within the list of group and listed races. Small efforts have been made to downgrade handicaps and promote set weights and weight for age races however the strength of fields that most handicaps attract make them better punting races than possible under even conditions.
As the largest racing country in the world, Australia has 66 of the world's 193 Group One races, recognised by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities.
By tradition many state races have maintained higher gradings than they would otherwise be entitled to because of the poor quality of horses participating in them. The rapid growth in the Victorian and to a lesser extent, New South Wales racing carnivals has made the leading races of the other states less competitive in prizemoney and as a result prestige.
Given the self-interest of each state forming the Australian Racing Board, progress in properly grading races has been slow and controversy is often found in the decisions taken by the Pattern Racing Committee. In recent years, change has been occurring as the Pattern Racing Committee has taken a more scientific approach.
Criticism is also often made of a trend towards the promotion of sprint races over staying races. Many traditional staying races have been reduced in distance significantly over the last 30–40 years. Many parties have called for staying races to be given special dispensation in on-going reviews of race classifications to allow for a current lack of depth to encourage breeding and thus further depth in future.
The group 1 races (and selected other races) in Australia can generally be split into 3 groups, Australian races, state/city/track races and historically significant races.
Read more about this topic: Thoroughbred Racing In Australia
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