Lights On, Ready To Go: Philippine Racing Rehearses For A New Beginning

BUZZ ROCKET was a long way from Churchill Downs, Kentucky on Thursday evening. The world-famous Louisville track is where he debuted 363 days earlier, stepping out on that September day in the Bluegrass State with a blank slate and a pedigree that said he had every right to be running past the iconic Twin Spires the following May.

Well, that didn’t work out. California Chrome’s half-brother never got close to a Kentucky Derby, he won one modest maiden in the U.S. and now finds himself in Padre Garcia, Batangas province, about 60 miles south of Manilla.

But the move could be the blue-blooded colt’s bright second chance. In fact, Buzz Rocket embodies that optimistic sense of new beginnings around the Philippine Jockey Club (PJC)’s new Padre Garcia race track and training centre, with its developing grandstand facing towards the backstretch where smart white stable blocks with deep green metal roofs will have capacity for 2,000 horses.

Thursday marked the latest landmark since ground was broken on the 50-hectare site in March 2022: two weeks after staging their first barrier trials, it was the night they “turned on the lights” at Padre Garcia for the first floodlit trials.

The PJC is just about as new as its facility – born out of the concerns of prominent owners and breeders to preserve the industry – and will aim to strengthen a sport that has been relying perilously on one track, the Manilla Metro Turf Club’s Malvar racecourse (12 miles north of Padre Garcia) after the post-Covid collapses of the historic Manilla Jockey Club and Philippines Turf Club.

“When I arrived here, I was quite amazed to learn about the golden age of racing in the Philippines, the glamourous scene that it was way back in the 1930s and then how it declined (after the 1960s),” Harry Troy told Idol Horse.

Troy knows a bit about horse racing in Asia and how decline can bring painful demise. The Australian former jockey was the English language race caller for almost 30 years at now-defunct Taipa, the extinct Macau Jockey Club’s old track, and is now a positive voice promoting the PJC project, to which he provides knowledge from a lifetime in racing and helps develop new talent on the track, behind the mic and in front of the camera.

He was trackside to help with the race calls when Buzz Rocket ‘won’ trial seven easily, ears pricked. That was the third event after the lights went on and Troy called it with microphone in one hand, binoculars balanced in the other. There’s no functioning caller’s box yet: the fitting-out, the landscaping around the edges is still ongoing.

“There are kinks to iron out,” Troy said, but that was to be expected from what was “very much a dress rehearsal” squeezed in between the disruption of the passing Typhoon Nando (Ragasa) and the approaching Typhoon Opong. Severe storms at times in the past three and a half years have hampered the project but a late October or November opening is keenly anticipated.

“If the typhoons move on and we can get a run of clear weather, the hope is to race for the first time on October 29,” Troy said, noting that the new track development is advancing at a good pace given the recent run of bad weather this typhoon season has brought.

“There’s a real buzz,” he added.

Even the lowering cloud – the sharp, black peaks of the nearby mountains poking through a grey shroud – and the drenching rain couldn’t dampen Troy’s enthusiasm.

“We had 125 millimetres, that’s about four-and-a-half to five inches, of rainfall within a very short time on Thursday and the worst of that had stopped only about an hour before the first trial,” he said.  

By the time the gate-side officials – head to toe in fluorescent yellow waterproofs – and the stalls attendants in liveried black body protectors and helmets got to the business of loading for trial one, the dirt track looked in good shape; the only sign of the torrential downpour’s effects perhaps being the way the riders stayed off the inside rail.

Deon Vissar, the club’s South African track consultant was happy with the circuit’s vertical drainage: “Within half an hour of the rain stopping, the track had drained off extremely well,” he said. “We were able to harrow the track and kick off almost on time. This was a great test for the track and I couldn’t be happier with the condition … and how it looked and how it rode.

“The reports from the jockeys were very positive about both the racetrack condition, and the width of our new barrier stalls. Our starting gates give horses that extra bit of room, and also the safety padding that lessens the chance of injury to both horse and rider.”

It was just before trial four that the lights went on, illuminating the oval with its 1600m main track on a five per cent camber, and the 1500m inner training circuit.

The first quintet to trial under the lights was led home by Charmboy, a locally-bred three-year-old with a very North American pedigree. Buzz Rocket, a son of the U.S. champion and successful sire Curlin fits in well to this corner of the racing world, an agricultural region of fertile plains and mountains.

Not far from the track, on the main road into Padre Garcia, is a welcome arch letting everyone know that they are entering the “Cattle Trading Capital of the Philippines.”

Forget the Batangas beef cattle, with Buzz Rocket’s genes there are hopes the chestnut might in time boost the country’s Thoroughbred breeding industry, which also numbers the late Fastnet Rock’s half-brother Juggling Act on its stallion roster and produces about 400 foals per year.

“Is the Philippines the sleeping giant of South East Asia?” Troy mused. “It has so much potential because it has never been promoted.”

The group of owners and breeders behind the Philippine Jockey Club certainly have bold ambitions: they have brought in Alan Painter, the former Victoria Racing Club handicapper with experience in Korea to revamp the handicapping system; Steve Wood has brought his experience from the southern California circuit to the track construction; and the stewarding panel is headed by Australian Keith Mulley.

The aim is to up the quality of racing, improve the systems, increase engagement, prize money and turnover, get the breeding side of things up to an international standard, and participate in TAB broadcasts and betting into Australia.

Batangas, with a population close to three million, could be the right region to make it work: the urban areas are growing there and that could bring an increased market for horse racing, the sport and the wagering that comes with it.

But horse racing has not been well publicised and has never been a prominent pastime in the predominantly Catholic nation of 116 million people, which has an uneasy relationship with gambling.

Last November, Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos issued an executive order banning Philippines Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) after government department reports said that the POGOs posed risks to society through negative consequences including increased crime rates, social instability, and exploitation of vulnerable people associated with them. This came after POGOs were linked to organised crime and human trafficking.

Yet betting is a popular pursuit, notably wagering on live action cock fighting. But during the Covid pandemic, in-person cock-fighting was shut down temporarily, leading to live streaming of fights offering online betting. That increased the scale of bets.

Then came reports in 2022 of the deaths of 34 men, dumped in a volcanic lake, who had been accused of fixing online cockfights. A government senate investigation found that daily turnover on the brutal sport was US$52.4 million. Live-streamed cock fights were outlawed: horse racing might fill a gap.

The PJC wants racing and betting on racing distanced from gambling’s recent scandals. The sport is offered in about 200 licensed betting shops in the Philippines where many bettors still prefer cash, so there is significant scope for the growth of the online market. The Presidential Cup at Malvar last December produced turnover of about ₱50 million pesos (US$860,000) and regular days can produce about ₱24 million pesos (US$413,000).

“Online betting only represents 20 per cent of the handle and there is so much we can do with that. Not everybody has a bank account so (that’s why) cash betting is big,” Troy said.

As the drenching drizzle fell at Padre Garcia, and the large Cummins diesel generator pumped electricity into the track’s beaming floodlights, the energy around Philippine racing’s hoped for new beginning was all positive. ∎

Michael Cox

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