Racing: Syndication gets you in with a chance

If Arlingtonboulevard wins today's $150,000 Easter Handicap watch the victory ceremony in the Ellerslie birdcage.

It's the future of racing.

The classy Matamata mare underscores the fact that syndication or a medium to large partnership of owners is where racing is headed.

Imagine winning a Melbourne Cup and looking around in the Flemington birdcage for someone to party with and realising you're the sole owner.

Sure the A$3 million ($3.5 million)-plus winner's cheque is monumental - but so were the bills to get to that point.

Syndication allows you the fun without the mammoth outlay. Get 10 people together and buy a $60,000 colt at the sales.

Your only real outlay is the $6000 - a corner of the purchase price. From that point on your one-tenth share costs you the same each week as dinner and a decent bottle of red.

And practically everyone who has won a horse race in a syndicate will tell you the collective fun is far greater than going solo.

Arlingtonboulevard is raced by a syndicate of 10, which evolved through Christchurch land developer Geoff Taylor and Cambridge-based Gordon Calder. The pair met when Taylor had his broodmares agisted at Windsor Park Stud and Calder worked in a management role at the stud.

The pair owned Arlingtonboulevard, liked her, and advertised in Friday Flash for eight others to form a syndicate to race her.

Sport has always been closely aligned with horse racing in New Zealand.

One of those responding to the ad was West Auckland wine grower Ivan Sapich, a top-class rugby player for Auckland in his younger days.

Calder, a cricket nut, likes the way the syndicate has formed and the $147,400 the mare has won so far will leap beyond $250,000 if she gets her nose in front close to the line today.

And there will be more. You get the feeling Arlingtonboulevard is only just maturing.

If there is going to be victory today, the syndicate would like it to be clear cut.

None of them relish discussing finishing second in last week's $120,000 New Zealand Bloodstock Breeders Stakes at Te Aroha and getting the race in the judicial room, even though not involved in the race interference that cost Viennetta a sustainable victory.

Sapich shares his ownership corner with his wife Pat and neither are strangers to the racing game.

Ivan Sapich's background underlines the close links between rugby and racing a few decades back, ties which which led to that old line of "rugby, racing and beer".

Sapich's coach when he played for Waitemata was former All Black Arthur Hughes, later to become president of the Auckland Racing Club and he raced his first horse, Wyoming, with All Black Adrian Clark.

The coach of the Auckland team he played in between 1958 and 1962 was the remarkable Fred Allen, another racehorse owner and regular at Ellerslie (Allen was selector-coach of Auckland from 1957 to 1963).

Sapich was the unofficial bouncer for his mate Tom Madgwick at Auckland's Station Hotel.

Madgwick, a big racehorse owner, was for many years one of the guiding lights of Manawatu rugby.

"Racing's given us a lot of highs, but it teaches you a lot about how to lose, too," says Sapich.

"Old Ivan Tucker, who trained Wyoming for us, told me one day that horse racing was like sitting on top of Mt Everest and having someone kick it out from underneath you the next morning. He was right."

Taylor was missing when Arlingtonboulevard won her first stakes race at New Plymouth and the Cantabrian was not at Te Aroha last week.

Late yesterday Taylor had not declared whether he would be at Ellerslie today, but clearly the partners would be delighted with another no-show.

"If Geoff shows up I might have to put him in my car and take him down to the township maybe tie him to a tree," says Sapich.

Looking at Sapich's massive frame you know that would be entirely possible.

Arlingtonboulevard was ridden last week by Jason Waddell and is replaced today by No 1 stable jockey Michael Walker, who rode in Sydney last weekend.

Trainer Mark Walker is delighted with the way Arlingtonboulevard has come through the Te Aroha race and is not surprised.

He has said all along that the Speights Easter at Ellerslie was the mare's No 1 priority and it would be her peak performance this campaign.