The fall of Singapore: will racing even survive until October 2024?

Cover image courtesy of the Singapore Turf Club

It’s a little over a fortnight since it was announced that the Singapore Turf Club (STC) would close down horse racing on the island nation, and since then, all facets of the industry, both local and international, have been coming to grips with it.

There is no precedent for this. No other racing jurisdiction in the modern world has cut loose its racing industry with the abrupt closure of the sport, so Singaporean participants have no yard stick. Trainers are at a loss as to their futures, jockeys are scrambling for overseas work, and owners are already getting out.

Last week, local newspaper The Straits Times reported that 17 of the 22 local trainers, alongside some 30 owners of Singapore’s 500-odd registered owners, had come together in Upper Serangoon to collectively point in the same direction.

The aim of the meeting was firstly, ‘to get owners represented by a working committee and, secondly, to collaborate with trainers to form only one voice, if any representations were to be made with the Club (the STC) and the Government’.

The problem is this… since the announcement on June 4 that the Singapore Turf Club will cease operation on October 5 next year, the exodus has already started. Small numbers of owners are looking to sell or relocate their horses, and jockeys are scouting opportunities afield.

It means that, though the Club has a sunset date towards the end of next year, there may not be a viable racing industry in Singapore between now and then to keep the sport alive as it approaches closure.

The STC has promised it’s business as usual, with plans in place for a very grand send-off with the 100th Grand Singapore Gold Cup to be the final ever race in Singapore, but the general consensus around the traps at Kranji is that that could be pie in the sky because ‘the structure of the close-down is just not feasible’.

Local trainer Michael Clements, an ex-pat Zimbabwean, has been training in Singapore since 1998. He is the president of Singapore’s Association of Racehorse Trainers (ART) and, as such, he is a spokesperson for the situation at Kranji Racecourse.

“We’re pretty concerned that there are already owners pulling out horses, retiring horses and selling horses to Malaysia,” Clements said, speaking to TDN AusNZ. “We’re concerned the gradual decrease in the horse population here will lead to a lot of staff being let go earlier than expected, earlier to the proposed close date next year.”

Right now in Singapore, there are 22 registered trainers with a ball-park figure of about 350 staff between them. Clements has 60 horses in work and a staff of 30. Every single one of these people will need a new career when racing wraps up, be it in the next few months or in October 2024.

“The staff is made up of assistant trainers, supervisors, trackwork riders, grooms and cleaners,” Clements said. “Outside of that, there are private farriers and others connected to the industry. There’s an equine dentist up here, jockey valets who work privately, along with feed and supplement suppliers, all of whom will all be affected by this to some degree.”

The obvious question is whether the STC has acknowledged the costs of its decision to the local workforce, and while Clements is diplomatic, other trainers are less diplomatic off the record, labelling the Club’s narrative “a load of bollocks”.

“The Club has said to us that they are going to provide support to people in upskilling, as well as job placement,” Clements said. “So they have said they will initiate that, but of course, to date, we haven’t heard anything else about it. And right now, the concern is that racing could well collapse in the months ahead.”

If owners start to shift away horses en masse in the next few months, it is dubious whether the sport will last until October 24. Clements said it’s a real and pressing situation. He’s had eight horses already planned for exit, and that’s in just two weeks since the announcement.

“If that happens, we’re going to have to let staff go, and jockeys will get less riding opportunities,” he said. “Less racehorses on raceday will lead to less races on raceday, and potentially we could lose one race meeting a month. It’s really difficult to work out how it is going to go.”

The STC has instigated an incentive scheme for local owners to stay put. It is providing SGD$700 (AU$765) a month to owners to keep their horses going, along with a promise of repatriation when the time comes to relocate horses out of Singapore.

“But the owners, and pretty much everyone in the industry, have lost the drive to keep going at this stage,” Clements said. “The way it’s all been structured to close down, there’s very little thought put into it, like the whole thing has been thought out by somebody who has never worked in the industry and has no idea how it works.”

Ten steps behind

Last week, when we spoke to Magic Millions’ Asian representative, David Chester, he said he was “bloody sad”, and not just for Magic Millions but “for the participants up there and for the history”.

Clements also used the word ‘sad’, and you can hear in the diplomacy of his conversation that he is as shocked and defeated as everyone in Singapore racing.

He said there is probably zero chance that the STC will backflip on its decision, but there is a small chance that an extension might occur. Even an extension, however, will be fruitless if there is an early exodus of owners and horses.

“Out of my string of 60 horses, I’ve probably got around eight already in these two weeks whose owners don’t want to carry on,” Clements said. “I’ve been requested to try and sell them or move them to Malaysia, and I’d say all trainers have some owners who aren’t prepared to carry on.

“At this stage, it’s a reasonably small percentage, but the worry is that it’s only been two-and-a-half weeks since the announcement was made, and we’re just not sure if this trend will continue.”

While the owners have been financially incentivised to stay on, Clements believes it’s not enough to make them stay on. Why would they? The closure is imminent. No such incentive has been offered to Singapore’s riding ranks, nor the 22 trainers.

“The Club has asked us to talk to them about this, but this is something they should have considered right at the beginning,” Clements said. “Now they’re running around, trying to see how everything can be kept going. It has been very poorly executed by the Club’s CEO.”

There is next to no praise by anyone for the way the STC has handled this situation. Clements said the local press has been very supportive, and the industry participants are now gathering collectively as the Singapore Turf Club has proceeded with legal representation and PR theatrics to guide them through the mess.

Clements said trainers, owners, riders and staff are on the backfoot, that there’s now a need for them to do the same, but the Club has had a long head-start and participants are scrambling.

“The Club clearly had plenty of time to discuss the close with its lawyers, and it has a professional PR company that has been able to structure the close for them, as well as feed the press their side of the story,” Clements said. “We were caught unaware so they’re 10 steps ahead of us, and we’re regrouping right now to look at our options with regard to representation.”

Is there a chance that the decision could be overturned with the collective legal force of industry representatives?

“I’d say there is no chance of it being overturned, but I’d say there’s a very, very small chance of an extension,” Clements said. “All of the advice we’ve had so far would suggest that there’s very little chance of either.”

Questions, no answers

It’s hard to imagine that Clements has given little thought to what he might do when racing wraps up next year, but such is his situation. Like most trainers around Kranji, the weight of responsibility is heavy on him when it comes to his staff and horses.

He said he would like to continue training in the region, but whether that means in Selangor, Macau or Hong Kong, he hasn’t thought that far ahead.

“Staff is my primary concern right now,” he said. “These are people who have been working with horses all their life, so for them to try and upskill and find job placements, which is what the Club has said it’s going to try and assist with, I just think it’s easier said than done. It’s an escape mechanism for them to say this.

“It’s just such a shame because the staff are doing what they love to do and it’s all getting taken away from them.”

From a world’s perspective, the horses are probably more of an issue. David Chester said the world will be watching how some 700 thoroughbreds will be dispersed out of Singapore. Where will they all go if Malaysia is virtually full, and how will they get to new places?

“No details on what the repatriation will look like have been forthcoming,” Clements said. “We believe that, initially, they thought all horses would just go to Malaysia. However, we’ve asked them about horses going to wherever the owner wants them to be repatriated to, and they said they’re looking into it, so we don’t have an answer yet.”

There are huge questions to be answered in this respect, and they’re as much welfare-orientated as anything.

For example, if there are horses still at Kranji after the October 2024 sunset, who will look after them? Trainers won’t be able to draw a wage, so they will have to move on, as will all or most staff onsite.

“These horses are athletes,” Clements said. “You can’t leave them standing around doing nothing while they’re queuing up to get out of Singapore to go to Australia, for instance. Who is going to look after them and how long is it going to take for them to get out, and will they be still in a position to race once they get out?

“Will it take them six months to get out or a year? We just don’t know.”

You could argue that it’s early days to be worrying about this, that by October 2024, all of this will be clear and the red tape around exit and entry quarantine will be worked out. But if Clements' opinion is anything to go by, and it is, confidence is not high that all of this will be addressed with diplomacy and urgency.

“The Club has no details on this, and we don’t believe they have any idea themselves how they’re going to do this,” he said. “Once racing is over, there is no opportunity for owners to have any return on maintaining horses, so who is going to look after the horses? If there is a six month to one-year delay on getting them out, who is going to pay for them in the meanwhile? Who is going to finance that?

“It’s not fair on the owners to ask them to do that, and you can’t be expecting trainers to be hanging around, looking after horses when they’ve got other plans to make. You’ve got 22 trainers here, and a lot of them are younger trainers who have just started their training careers. To have this all taken from them, it’s very distressing and confusing.”

Distress and confusion are rampant right now, and the subsequent mental health of young trainers is on everyone’s mind. Even Clements, as experienced as he is with 25 years in Singapore, is finding the rush of the situation hard to bear at times.

“I’ll have to work out what I’m going to do sooner or later, but at this stage, we’re trying to get through these difficult times now to get some form of stability since the carpet’s been pulled from underneath us,” he said.

Morally incorrect

This week, we contacted other trainers in Singapore to see what the broader situation was. There was a reluctance to go on record, not for lack of courage but because of what Clements mentioned; they are gathering their options and trying to present a united front (and seamless message) to the Singapore Turf Club.

However, the feedback was appalling on how things have been handled. The decision to close racing has been an assault on their livelihoods, and many of these young trainers are Singapore natives. To continue in their chosen careers, they will have to leave their homes.

Regarding staff, some might take the option of ‘upskilling’ into other local industries, or some might matriculate into Singapore’s equestrian scene, but the basic premise is they shouldn’t have to. Racing is 180 years old in Singapore and no one, not even Clements, the president of the Association of Racehorse Trainers, saw this coming.

“To be called into a meeting and told it was all over, it was shocking,” he said. “There were what we might call controlled leaks in the weeks before, but we really had no idea it was coming. Clearly, the Club’s CEO had known about it for a year and a half, and she didn’t disclose it at all.

“The right thing to do would have been to get a few key players in the industry in and discuss how we might do this amicably, how we might close down racing. It was poorly planned and poorly executed. It could have been done a whole lot better.”

There are no winners here, not even among the Singapore Turf Club, and Clements described the people of the industry as “collateral damage”. A retrenchment plan has been put in place, but it doesn’t include the jockeys and trainers. It’s almost like they don’t factor in the issue, according to Clements.

“To be treated in this manner is morally incorrect,” he said.