I was very honored to be considered to represent the Melbourne Cup involvement in the inaugural ANZMEX Racing Lunch on 10th November.
This was being sponsored by Air New Zealand, JW Marriott, Paola Hernadex, Codere, Victoria Racing Club, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, Australia Unlimited, Hipodromo De Las Americas, Charity Coalition, Hola Aunz, Camara De Comercio Britanica and Imexdi. This lunch was celebrating the ANZMEX Racing Week whereby Australia, New Zealand and Mexico were sharing their history and passion for horse racing and comprised of an extensive buffet lunch, open bar, fashion parade and a special Sheila Laxon horse race was on the program!
I met with Adrienne Bonwick, the ANZMEX President, on 4th June in Melbourne, together with Joe McGrath, the Melbourne Cup events organizer and discussed the event in detail. It seemed a great opportunity to create acquaintances that could lead to business deals being done between these countries in the future, as the aim for the Australia/New Zealand/Mexico Business Council was to improve horse racing in Mexico and create benefits for all three countries by being able to open more trading doors in many different spheres.
I was more than happy to accept and flew to Mexico on Sunday, 3rd November, together with the gorgeous, bubbly, fun loving Annie Goble who was to mind me while we were there – had she any idea of what this could entail!
We flew, courtesy of Air New Zealand (and what a fabulous flight that was, especially on the return when we were upgraded to business class!) to Los Angeles and then on down to Mexico City where Adrienne met us and introduced us to Jorge Berrio, the Director General of the JW Marriott who very kindly hosted us at their wonderful hotel.
The following evening there was a very formal VIP dinner with 30 ambassadors, politicians, trade commissioners and director generals/general managers of BP, Macquarie, Aristocrat, and Air NZ etc from Australia, New Zealand and Mexico.
Annie had brought some very nice Melbourne hats and fascinators with her (extravagant packing I had thought!) but these were so well received by the gorgeous girls attending the dinner and it certainly gave the event the Cup feel. We had the most amazing six-course cuisine extravaganza and it was certainly a very different way of watching the marvelous Melbourne Cup. Annie took photos of some very established upper crust gentlemen wearing her hats later in the evening and I daresay these are safely under lock and key somewhere very safe now!
Seated next to me was Enrique Gracida who had been a jockey extraordinaire in Mexico as well as being a much respected polo player. I believe he is 83 years old and still teaching polo and showing his students how to hit the ball! He was an amazing and very interesting person from whom we learnt some eye opening things about Mexico, not all of them good.
His four nephews were all 10-goal players all at the one time, which, I am sure, will never be repeated again. I’ve only ever met one 10 goal player in my life and to have four in the one family just gives you some idea of the incredible horse expertise of the Mexican people.
It was a delightful dinner and truly a great way to see people from the other side of the world gaze in awe at the great show the Melbourne Cup puts on. How proud I was to be associated with this fantastic race and all that it entails.
The next day we went to Valle Escondido-Sayavedra, owned by Sr Alberto Rivera Torres, with a lovely gentleman called Javier Mata, the General Director of Austeca, whom we were privileged to have accompany us on many of our excursions. This was an amazing place, polo playing a prominent part in its establishment and built up by Alberto’s father, who commissioned a larger than life beautiful bronze statue of himself on his favorite polo pony (see photo).
We had the most exclusive tour of the stables, saw the different western saddles, saw their horse walker, the youngsters out in the paddocks and, at the end, visited the awesome church built on the property after Alberto’s father died (see photo). There is a crypt built underneath the church where his father was placed and where his family can pay their respects, which is quite an incredible thing to see coming from our part of the world.
One thing that really impressed me was that every horse we saw during our visit to Mexico was friendly. Not once did we see a horse not be inquisitive about us or shy away from us in fear of being reprimanded and I think that speaks volumes of how horses are handled by Mexicans from day one.
The following day we went to the Hipodromo to see the horses working and meet the trainers, jockeys and track riders. Our Health and Safety personnel would have a fit! Horses being led off another horse and other horses galloping on the same track, but their accident records are very light so I imagine that all the riders have their wits about them 120% of the time! And, I would have to say, that good old common sense still exists over there! The horses looked very fit and well and it was interesting to learn that they can race on bute and lasex. The trainers were very keen to learn more about horses from our part of the world and it sounds like a very likely proposition that we could supply a planeload of horses for them to race there. They have 4 meetings a week with 10 races a day and, although they have stabling for 1400 horses at the racetrack, many of these are either spelling, recuperating, being broken in etc. so maybe their pool of racing horses could be as low as 7/800 which isn’t many at all when you have that many races during the week.
Codere have, I believe, a 25-year lease of the complex and they are a big gambling operation, running casinos, lotteries and all sorts of other establishments. There is a 25 million population in Mexico so plenty of opportunities for expanding gambling dollar opportunities. There is, at the moment, very little media promotion of the stories about trainers, jockeys, owners and horses that light up the public interest and get them following different horses for different reasons. The races are, in fact, not televised into betting outlets at the moment so there could be a huge improvement in the public participation, resulting in an enormous increase of turnover with a big push from those who know how to get the public’s attention in what’s happening in the racing game. And that is where the Melbourne Cup organizers should perhaps come in and volunteer information about how to improve a stage that has been very well built and just needs a bit of vibe happening.
And the spelling horses, those being broken in and even the pretrainers should be at another venue so that all the horses at the Hipodromo are there to race. This would increase the interest, the competition and excitement and produce more stories for the public to lap up. And from there, who knows, it could become a mini-Melbourne cup carnival, especially if they start targeting races and have a Mexico Cup with qualifying events leading into it.
Annie, Adrienne and I then went for the weekend to a lovely house in the Valle De Bravo, which is like a mini Switzerland. It is a gorgeous quaint town on the banks of a beautiful lake and we had the most amazing time there. There was a Saturday market in the center of the village where the beautiful church was and it was a very special day for us indeed. The Harley Davidson riders were there – 200 bikes parked in the square! All shapes, ages, sizes and styles – I don’t think I’ll ever see an array like that again.
We visited the Rancho Santa Rosa while we were there and that was mind-boggling! A sentry on the gate takes the driver’s license as you go in and returns it when you drive out, which, apparently, is normal going into these types of properties. The ranch was 900 hectares and it was nearly totally laid out as a park, beautiful trees and gardens everywhere, a huge vegetable area for the many staff working there and there was even a worm farm where all the stable manure was converted into worm fertilizer within 15 days!
The owner, Roberto Hernandez is a show jump fanatic and his stables and show jumping arena were to die for! We met his star show jump rider and his gorgeous wife, Coni and Fabian Sejanes, who were from Argentina, and we were lucky enough to go out for a ride in his wonderful hills for two days in a row and that was very special indeed.
One thing I found extraordinary was the driving in Mexico – apparently one just pays for one’s license and off you go, no lessons, no test to take etc. Which makes the way they drive there more understandable but quite white-knuckle stuff. I asked to the lovely Javier how he knew when he could go, as everyone is crushed together trying to get to the same place with only centimeters between the cars. He replied that he watches the wheels and if the other car’s is stationery, he goes. Amazingly enough it seems to work and in all the intense traffic we encountered there was not as much as a scrape of paint, which seemed unbelievable.
It was the trip of a lifetime; both Annie and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and met some amazing people. We crammed even more stuff in than is mentioned here, like a business ladies breakfast and talk, a ladies fashion brunch etc so it was a pretty full on for the ten days but there is a vibe about the place that is very contagious and I’m sure that there will be plenty of opportunities arising from the ANZMEX Council get together that could benefit all countries immensely.
I, for one, am scouting for suitable horses to make up that planeload of horses to increase the depth of racing there and we have Mexican jockeys champing at the bit to come over and try their hand at Aussie racing. Plus there’s plenty of very, very good riders available to fill our depleted work riding ranks so there’s plenty of scope for upgrading all countries with the utilization of what each one has to offer the others.
Refer to the Gallery for photos of ths wonderful trip