Malaysia back on Australasian racing map
When thinking of racing in Asia, the sport in Malaysia isn’t what immediately springs to mind, with the jurisdiction often seen as the poor cousin of neighbouring Singapore and a world away from Hong Kong, but the industry in the region is on a big upward curve.
Fuelled by renewed interest from a wave of old and new owners and co-mingling of betting pools into North America, Australia and India, racing at the Selangor Turf Club in Kuala Lumpur, not only the capital of Malaysia but also the national hub of the country’s thoroughbred industry, the sector is being revitalised after coming to a standstill during the peak of the pandemic.
Expatriate Kiwi trainer Simon Dunderdale has run a successful stable from Selangor for almost six years and he believes that racing in Malaysia – its thoroughbred population is made up largely of Australasian bred horses – can develop into a more prominent export market for Australia and New Zealand in the years ahead.
“Selangor has nearly 700 horses in work now, which I think they’ve got more horses than Singapore at the moment, so there’s a lot of owners around,” Dunderdale told ANZ Bloodstock News from Kuala Lumpur.
“We’re racing most weekends and the Selangor Turf Club is heading towards having a meeting every weekend, but for now they have to fit in with Ipoh and Penang, but their numbers and race days have cut right back. Selangor has got 46 race days planned for next season.
“There’s always been a great following of racing at Selangor. I can’t really quite pinpoint why they’re all here [and showing interest] but I think some of it has got to do with the downturn in Singapore, but I don’t really want to put Singapore down, as there’s always been a big connection between the two.
“I’ve been here for nearly six years and the horse numbers have gone up. There’s owners everywhere, the betting is getting strong again. The club is heading in the right direction and people are wanting to get involved.”
Dunderdale, 55, will join about 20 fellow Malaysian racing participants, made up of owners and trainers, at next week’s New Zealand Bloodstock Ready to Run Sale.
He has 35 horses in work, including top-class sprinter Awesome Storm (Phenomenons), a Benalla maiden winner in September 2020 who has won seven of his eight starts in Malaysia for Dunderdale, the highlight being this year’s 183,150Rgt (approx. AU$60,965) Tunku Gold Cup (Listed, 1200m) at Selangor in April.
Ipoh and Penang also host race meetings in Malaysia but much fewer dates.
“All this [international betting turnover] is added revenue for the club to be able to finally look towards getting the stake money up because stakes earnings have been low for a few years,” the well-travelled trainer said.
“If they can get it back closer to what it was back in the golden days [in the late 1990s and early 2000s] that would be fantastic.
“Years ago, when I was flying horses for IRT, we used to bring horses to Malaysia that were of similar quality to those who were going to Singapore.
“The class of Hong Kong has always been out in front but nowadays Malaysians are buying a lot more horses and I know at the New Zealand sales next week there’s a big team going over there.”
Dunderdale attended the recent Magic Millions 2YOs In Training Sale on the Gold Coast but came home empty handed.
“I couldn’t land one [at Magic Millions] and it’s my own fault. In the first third of the sale I bid on a few and then I thought I’d easily get a horse for $30,000 to $35,000, particularly by the time you take into account the cost of air freight and everything [about AU$15,000], so I thought I’d wait and then the second half of the sale went crazy and I couldn’t get close,” he said.
“The other thing is, we can’t bring a horse to Malaysia who has had Hendra virus vaccine because they can’t come directly to us. They have to go via Singapore [to quarantine] and a large part of the catalogue, 50-odd, had had that vaccine, so I had to take them out of the equation, but I was able to buy a couple of tried horses privately in Victoria.”
Starting his career in the thoroughbred industry working at Haunui Farm in New Zealand before periods with trainers Robbie Laing and Tony Noonan in Victoria and Mike Moroney in New Zealand, Dunderdale then rode trackwork in Macau, England, Ireland and Germany.
At the age of 40, Dunderdale took up training in Turkey, his intended one-year stint lasting a decade, before the opportunity came to move to Malaysia.
“Every year they have a reciprocal race with the MRA sponsoring a race in Turkey and the Turkish Jockey Club sponsors a race over here and the CEO of Selangor was there, Mike Fong, looking for new trainers and he asked me if I would be interested,” Dunderdale said of his approach to relocate to Malaysia.
“I said, ‘not really, but I will come over and have a look’. One thing led to another and, politically, it was unsafe in Turkey at that time.
“There were bombs going off and all sorts of things going on and I thought, ‘oh well, a change is needed and that I should head back towards home’ and I’ve now been here for five years.”
Dunderdale trains alongside fellow New Zealander Sharee Hamilton, Englishman Richard Lines, who rode in Sydney as a jockey before joining the training ranks, Australian expatriate Frank Maynard, a Karrakatta Plate (Gr 2, 1200m) winning trainer who has been in Malaysia for two decades.
For a long time, racing in Malaysia had a stigma attached to it, arguably unfairly that not everything was above board, but Dunderdale said the industry’s image problem has turned around after a concerted effort from the Selangor Turf Club and the MRA’s stewards, led by Fin Powrie, a respected Western Australian expat with significant international racing experience.
“The Selangor Turf Club realised it had to put out a much better image than what Malaysia had previously. That is why I think there’s quite a lot of new owners coming into the game now,” Dunderdale said.
“If you go back five years ago, if anyone mentioned Malaysia, they’d say it’s corrupt, it’s this and that, but the racing has definitely cleaned up.”
He also credited the investment made by the Selangor Turf Club in its apprentices school.
“When I was in Melbourne [for Derby Day at Flemington] there were 11 races on the day [at Selangor on October 30] and ten of them were won by apprentices,” Dunderdale said.
“The apprentice who rides for me here, she won six on the day [Singaporean Clyde Leck]. Fin Powrie when he came here, he said to the club that they needed a good apprentice school, that they needed to improve it as they’ve always had one, and now all these young apprentices are coming through.
“It won’t be long and you’ll see quite a few of them starting to head to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for extra experience. It is really looking good.”