Suzette Viljoen was the last individual owner to be champion owner and it was not without controversy, because whilst restricted race stakes earnings reflect on the NHA Stats they are excluded from the championship. Viljoen thus won the championship at the expense of Chris van Niekerk, whose stakes earnings when including restrcted races were higher. (Picture: Equus)
NHA CEO Vee Moodley and NHA chairperson Susan Rowett explained why the owners’ championship is not a moneylist of individuals or individual companies i.e. for an individual owner only the stakes earned by horses he or she owns outright will be included in their individual stakes tally for the championship – the stakes earned by horses he or she part-owns will not be added to that owner’s individual tally. Partnerships are treated as separate entities for the championship.
So if Joe Soap owns five horses outright, which earn R1 million during a season, and he owns two horses in partnership with H. Bloggs, which earn R250,000 in the season, and he owns three horses in partnership with J Smith, R Jones, I Briggs, Q. Higgins and Z. Presley, which earn R500,000 during the season, the championship will have the following entities somewhere in the standings:
Joe Soap – R1 million
Joe Soap/J Smith/R Jones/I Briggs/Q Higgins/Z Presley – R500,000
Joe Soap/H Bloggs – R250,000.
Gary player questioned this in an exclusive interview with Dave Mollett for Turf Talk.
In Player’s opinion all of the above owners should be separate entities for the owners championship.
So if, for example, Soap and Bloggs own an equal share of all of the horses under their partnership and in the partneship with six members shown above Soap owns 50% of every horse and the others own 10% each then in the championship their tallies should be:
Soap R1,375,000
Bloggs R125,000
Smith R50,000
Jones R50,000
Briggs R50,000
Higgins R50,000
Presley R50,000
Moodley explained that when partnerships are declared the percentages each owner had of each horse under the partnership was unknown to the NHA. It is known only to the owners themselves.
He said if this was changed, who would be responsible for verifying the percentage of each horse owned by each owner in the partnership?
It would understandably be a logistical nightmare and invoices would have to be passed over to the official who is verifying it.
He said it would also be open to manipulation. i.e. an owner who is in contention for the title could claim he owned 90% of a horse for a certain expensive race and he did not just own the original 20%.
Another owner who is just R1 million behind with a month to go could buy shares in a number of expensive horses and then claim he owns 50% of each.
Those sort of things would probably not happen, but Moodley’s explanation was convincing in painting it as a logistical nightmare – accurately keeping track of every percentage every owner has in every horse they own would be a difficult task and policing it would be even more difficult.
He also argued that an individual owner and a partnership were two different entities anyway.
It is not the analogy he used but one which could be used is comparing a singer playing for a band to the same singer playing solo … the band and the solo singer are two separate entities.
Susan Rowett said on the matter, “We looked into it thoroughly when I was chair before when someone made the same suggestion about four years ago. If I remember correctly there were various IT and administrative reasons on registrations and also a concern that it could easily be manipulated by changing shareholdings. Furthermore NHA data and IT functions are outsourced to NRB/Gold Circle and sometimes it’s difficult for NHA to get things done that it wants to get done.
I did look at what they do with owner stats elsewhere. In the UK, France and America owner stats all have partnerships listed in their stats – so we are like them.
In Ireland the people appear as individuals – I am not quite sure on the calculations as it seems a win counts as a win for every partner.
In any event Equus Champion owner is actually decided by Equus and they have a different approach than the NHA official stats – they exclude restricted stakes whereas official owner stats include restricted races.”
