Carol Altmann – The Terrier

I always suspected it was the case, but now it’s been confirmed – for almost three years, the Warrnambool City Council did virtually nothing about racehorse trainers breaking the rules at Lady Bay.

Early last year I lodged a Freedom of Information application for all of the correspondence between the council and Warrnambool Racing Club about breaches and alleged breaches of the training rules at Lady Bay.

I asked for everything from 1 December 2016 – which is when the new rules began – right through to 14 March 2019: all letters, emails, the whole lot.

The application took nine months, with the council making me jump through multiple, mind-screwing hoops to narrow down such things as what I meant by “members” of the WRC, what email addresses they should search for, what names they should search for, what keywords they should search for….

On and on it went, at an eventual cost of $216.75 (funded, thankfully, by a grant from the Walkley Foundation Public Fund which supports investigative journalism).

And at the end of all that searching and all that money, the result was just two letters:

Two, brief letters from the WCC to the WRC in 27 months: one written in March last year and one from November 2018.

This was the total sum of all written correspondence between those in charge, despite the steady stream of complaints (and videos and photographs) from the public during this time showing near misses, a racehorse that had thrown its rider, trainers riding fast past walkers, and numerous other safety issues. (See footage below from 2017.)

Apparently none of this warranted even a single email from the WCC to the WRC.

Perhaps they rang or texted each other, leaving no paper trail, I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that when it comes to cracking down on errant trainers, the council has been extraordinarily weak. 

Let’s be super clear here: asking for the rules to be enforced does not mean we are instantly “anti-horse racing” or that all trainers are running amok. #notalltrainers

Instead, it’s a reminder that a public beach is just that – public –  and members of the public have every right to be asking the council what happens when things go wrong, especially when it comes to racehorses on Warrnambool’s main swimming beach.

Until last November, not one trainer had been suspended or fined.

The council says it has since cancelled the permit of one trainer for breaches, although we don’t know who, or for how long, or why, or whether – to be frank – if this actually happened, as some within the industry are unaware of it.

 

Professional racehorse training at Lady Bay is now the new normal and despite claims that it has “always” been this way, it hasn’t.

A second FOI, which I will write more about soon, revealed there were regularly more than 1000 horse workouts a month at Lady Bay until disgraced trainer Darren Weir fell off his perch.

This is not how it used to be, but this is what our council happily signed up for: up to 96 horses running each morning until 10am, seven days a week, from the first day of Autumn to the first day of Summer, including public holidays.

And they did this with a promise that officers would keep an eye on things – the FOI results show that they didn’t.

In fact Mayor Tony Herbert has recently taken things one step further and suggested that people who are worried by the racehorses at Lady Bay should go to another beach.

Good grief.

This is an excerpt of what Cr Herbert recently wrote in an email to one resident:

“I have spoken to many people over the past few years and some of them avoid the said beach when training of horses is occurring.  Some find that unacceptable, others find that ok.  WCC approach is trying to achieve a balanced approach.

We are so lucky in our city and region that we have a number of alternatives, if sharing the beach with horses is unacceptable to you in the mornings. During the winter months if I’m walking my dog, I choose to use other beaches and there is a number of them.”

 

In other words, if push comes to shove with “sharing” our main beach, it is the general public that gets shoved.

More on the results of these FOIs soon.

The FOI would not have been possible without a grant from the Walkley Foundation Public Fund which supports investigative journalism.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

How is it possible that professional racehorse training is allowed at Albert Park – a public park – while kids are walking to school?

“Surely not,” I said, when someone told me about it happening.

But yes, it is happening, and the reader captured a video to prove it: a rider cantering at speed past Walter Oval and the South Rovers Football Club at around 8am on a recent weekday (see below).

This rider was one of several captured on video that week, but the one I have included here is the clearest footage.

According to this source, there are up to six racehorses at a time using Albert Park on different week days.

 

For those who don’t know Albert Park, it is a wonderful, sprawling, public space set aside by our city’s founders for all sorts of recreation and now includes three football ovals, netball courts, a spot for the pony club, a community garden and loads of empty space for people to walk their dogs.

 

It is also where dozens of school kids (including me, back in the day) walk to and from what is now Warrnambool College.

It is also across the road from the Warrnambool Racecourse: that multi-million dollar facility paid for by taxpayers, trainers and gamblers, where I naively thought racehorses were supposed to train.

 

But no, just like the story that has evolved around mass racehorse training at Lady Bay – our main public beach – apparently racehorses have been using Albert Park for years.

Years?

I am starting to wonder if I actually did grow up in Warrnambool, because I have no memory of multiple racehorses running along Lady Bay as I went for a swim, or racehorses cantering through Albert Park as I walked to school.

The most dangerous thing we encountered as school kids was the bombing magpies in breeding season and they were pretty formidable.

Racehorses, however, are in another league and I am astonished how far the Warrnambool City Council is prepared to bend the boundaries around public safety.

 

The council knows the racehorses are using Albert Park.

And they are using it for free, without any fees, or agreements, or restrictions apart from a few “no horse riding” signs tacked to posts which are regularly ignored.

Such is the sense of entitlement that has grown within some sections of the local racing industry (#notalltrainers) that they simply don’t care and why should they?

As we know, numerous trainers (#notalltrainers) using Lady Bay beach broke the rules for three years before the evidence became overwhelming earlier this year and the council called a meeting with the Warrnambool Racing Club.

Even then, there were no penalties imposed.

But at least Lady Bay has rules. It is not the case with Albert Park.

“No recent formal agreement has been struck with SWOTRA (South West Owners, Trainers and Riders Association) or the WRC (Warrnambool Racing Club) that permits racehorse training at Albert Park,” a council spokesman said.

“Council is prepared to investigate concerns related to the use of an area and, if provided with details of an activity, will make appropriate inquiries.”

So here we are again, with the public having to monitor via smartphones and note-taking what is going on in our public spaces and places.

But what are the racehorses doing there in the first place?

And why do commercial racehorse trainers get to use this area for free?

 

That is a question I am sure the sports clubs who use the public sportsgrounds at Albert Park would love to know, because they are facing a 100% increase in fees.

The closest I can get to an answer is that the racehorses are hitching themselves to the Warrnambool Pony Club, which is a bit like sprint cars turning up at a go-cart track.

“Albert Park has some long-established uses related to horse-riding activities. The pony club is located at Albert Park,” the council spokesman said by email.

The Warrnambool Pony Club includes the WRC among its sponsors, and, of course, involves more than little kids on Shetlands.

It holds events and gymkhanas and has an area set out for its activities, but these events are held on weekends and in a very specific space. Pony club is not for commercial gain, but fun.

Only in the context of WCC’s capitulation to the WRC could a racehorse working on weekdays be equated to ponies trotting around on weekends. Such are the times in which we live.

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