Northern exposure – Is Bendigo Victorian racing’s sleeping giant?

Bendigo will be the Victorian racing spotlight with its standalone meeting. As training becomes increasingly decentralised, the opportunity is there for the track tagged the “Nursery of Champions” to become one of the major hubs of the industry.

Amid the shifting demographic of Victorian horse racing and training, where the line between city and country has become blurred, Bendigo has been the sleeping giant.

Cranbourne, dismissed a generation ago as a basic venue for small-time country trainers, is now Victorian racing’s epicentre. 

Southside, a merger of Cranbourne and another awakened giant, Pakenham, is Australia’s Newmarket or Chantilly, a status some still can’t grasp. Strong words were exchanged in a recent industry sub-committee meeting when Southside dared declare itself “metro”.

Ballarat has also sprung to life. Seven hundred horses are worked at one of Australia’s coldest training centres. All up, Southside has around 1700.

Flemington, once the king of training, has just 600 on the books.

Victoria’s racing and training hotspots now form a triangle – or soon will. Flemington is now the only metropolitan training base and it remains to be seen how long that will continue.

The Victoria Racing Club seems to have backtracked a little on abandoning training at racing’s headquarters but it’s still on the table, with trainers assured a five-year countdown, the same provided to Caulfield trainers who migrated mostly to Southside.

With southeast and west now booming, the corner of the triangle yet to be explored is at the top.

In 2022 Racing Victoria paid $25.3 million for 980 acres just north of Tullamarine airport. It will either be landbanked or developed into some sort of racing and training fantasyland. RV has confirmed that options remain open.

One hundred and forty kilometres to the north of the parcel dubbed Project X is Bendigo, a major provincial centre that recently edged past Ballarat as the state’s third most populated city. Its racetrack is dubbed the “Nursery Of Champions” but the nursery is on its way to becoming far more grown-up.

The Golden Mile meeting on Saturday, featuring 10 races worth a total of $1.5 million, is one of Bendigo’s two stand-alone Saturday meets. The Bendigo Cup is run in late October, once the tail-end of the Melbourne spring carnival but now much part of it given the carnival’s march into November.

For beautiful Bendigo, there are opportunities and challenges. The race club is negotiating with Racing Victoria over retention of the current April date of the Golden Mile, which was first run in 2015.

Bendigo Jockey Club chief executive Paul Scullie said the challenge for all provincial stand-alones was to match wagering of a metropolitan meet if run on the same day. 

Southside revealed recently that it had bucked the trend of a nationwide wagering slump, with a $400 million splurge across 30 meetings, up 11 per cent.

Golden Mile wagering in 2024 was $48 million, a whisker below same-same city numbers.

“We love April. It’s an option that works for us. It will be 30 degrees up here on Saturday. Come May, the weather drops considerably,” Scullie said.

“The issue, for RV and therefore for us, is whether we are the right option for day two of The Championships (at Randwick). We believe we are and are arguing to retain our current date but we also understand the wagering realities.”

Racing Victoria chief executive Aaron Morrison told The Straight: “The 2025/26 race dates process is ongoing and will be considered by the RV Board at an upcoming board meeting. These are expected to be publicly released by June.”

Scullie said running a week later would “not be a major issue for us” as the BJC focuses on building not only on Golden Mile crowds, in part via an unlikely tap-in to the arts community, but also the track and its amenities to become that pointy end of the Victorian racing triangle.

Scullie realises that Bendigo’s expansion depends in some ways on the future of training at Flemington and the role of Project X.

He said “no one seems to know” what will become of Project X and Morrison told The Straight that RV was “continuing to explore options for it”.

Morrison said land evaluation “as of today (Wednesday) made it an increasingly valuable asset for the industry”.

“We are currently undertaking some analysis to understand the value of this land under various different future scenarios,” he said.

“One option previously raised has been to establish a purpose-built training centre and this is still being considered, among various opportunities for the site.

“We haven’t set a timeline on any decision for this land, noting that it is also incumbent on us to explore all options when considering the future of training in Victoria, including the potential use of the northwest parcel as well as the potential to invest in and develop existing training centres.”

Morrison said RV and the VRC would discuss the future of training at Flemington in coming months. “These conversations will be important while we continue to plan for training across the state under different scenarios,” he said.

VRC chief executive Kylie Rogers hinted at a preference to retain training, saying: “The VRC is very proud to house 19 trainers and 600 horses at their precinct. 

“The current training lease for these trainers is five years. The trainers are a very important stakeholder of the VRC and we are working with RV and our trainers on what the future looks like.”

These things will impact Bendigo in the medium and long term but are beyond its control and in the meantime, the club is marching forward.

The track will soon be ripped up and re-laid for the first time in 25 years. A new 1200m chute, 120 new stables and a bush trail are part of an ambitious master plan.

The club has not succeeded in enticing strong crowds to the Golden Mile but it is now attempting to broaden its reach, even aligning itself to a major arts festival.

Qantas provides direct return flights to Sydney five times a week from an airstrip directly across the road from the racetrack. Scullie hopes to entice not just arts and racing visitors from Sydney but in time Sydney trainers establishing satellite stables.

“Not many know about the Qantas flights. They are a massive marketing tool for us in so many ways,” Scullie said.

“If we get a permanent date at Easter, we’d love to bring people from interstate on weekend packages.

“As far as Sydney trainers go, it would be a hell of a lot more time-efficient to have boxes here rather than Cranbourne or Pakenham.”

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An exhibition of the work of famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo runs from March 15 to July 13 at the Bendigo Art Gallery. Outside of Melbourne, Bendigo is regarded as Victoria’s arts capital.

Do art and racing mix? “I guess we’ll find out,” Scullie said.

Scullie envisions the horse population of Bendigo to swell from 90 to over 300 in the next few years.

Elements of the master plan are yet to be signed off by Racing Victoria but dialogue has been positive and “we are pulling out all stops,” Scullie said.

City trainers once dismissed Cranbourne with the line: “What was the last good horse to come out of there?” In that metro-centric era, the new Pakenham didn’t even exist and Ballarat was a backwater. Bendigo was a nursery.

The story is now much different.

A handful of newbies have set up at Bendigo, including former leading Singapore trainer and Cliff Brown’s one-time lieutenant Tim Fitzsimmons, who broke the ice with his first winner at Swan Hill earlier this month.

“As far as Sydney trainers go, it would be a hell of a lot more time-efficient to have boxes here rather than Cranbourne or Pakenham” – Bendigo chief executive Paul Scullie

Fitzsimmons expects to be the first of many “profile” trainers to train from Bendigo.

“You couldn’t not train winners here,” Fitzsimmons said.

“It is so central to many tracks. When they get the 1200m chute and bush trail up and going it will be a game changer.

“Access to the grass is unbelievable, it’s a dreamland. It’s always sunny, you can be in Sydney in an hour if you need to, you’re always driving against the traffic (heading to Melbourne).

“I can’t see why this place just won’t take off.”