THE race is a sprint over 1200 metres featuring the equine equivalents of Usain Bolt. Between them, the field has won 22 Group 1 races and almost $33 million in prizemoney. Foreign intrigue is added by the US-bred, Irish-trained US Navy Flag. Owned by global breeding behemoth Coolmore and trained by the world’s best trainer in Aidan O’Brien, US Navy Flag will be the first internationally trained horse to run in The Everest.

WHAT IT IS?
The Everest is the world’s richest race on turf: 12 horses, 1200 metres, $13 million up for grabs and it will be run and won in a little over a minute.

The distance was selected because this is Sydney’s race and Sydney excels at producing world-class sprinters. There are plenty of big-money staying races around the world — including that one down south on the first Tuesday in November — but until The Everest, there was nothing of this scale on offer for speed merchants racing on the turf surface.

WHEN IS IT?
The Everest takes place at 4.15pm on Saturday, October 13, at Royal Randwick racecourse.

WHERE IS IT?
The field jumps from barrier stalls located in a chute off the course proper, joins the main track at the 1000-metre mark and turns for home with 400 metres left to run. The final 300 metres of the race are up the famous rise up the Randwick home straight — to the cheers of the crowd.

The Everest is run under the weight-for-age (WFA) scale. Unlike the Melbourne Cup, which is run under a handicap system that attempts to level the field on ability — the better a horse has performed, the more weight it must carry — weight-for-age levels the field on the basis of sex and age — the older you are, the more weight you carry. This plays into the hands of quality younger horses, but also caps the amount of weight impost to be carried by horses of each age group, in effect rewarding ability as opposed to seeking equality.

HOW DOES IT ALL HAPPEN?
Where The Everest turns the traditional racing system on its head is when it comes to compiling the field.

Instead of a race club putting up a prizemoney purse and selecting which horses can compete for it, The Everest outsources the selection process, relying on market forces. It’s modelled off the Pegasus World Cup invitational event raced on the dirt surface in Florida over 1800 metres at the end of January.

When The Everest was launched last year, Racing NSW and the Australian Turf Club sought 12 investors and asked each to stump up $1.8 million. For their money, each shareholder took ownership of one of a dozen entry slots into the race for a three-year span — so in effect a $600,000 investment each year by the slot holder for three years.

Within two months of going to market, all slots were sold, with buyers across the spectrum of the racing industry. One slot went to the world’s largest breeding operation (Coolmore), another to Australia’s largest bloodstock auctioneer (Inglis), the TAB took one slot and record-breaking Sydney trainer Chris Waller snapped up another.

If you are lucky enough to own a slot and own a horse you think has a chance, as Coolmore do in 2018 with US Navy Flag, then that’s your runner sorted.

Failing that, slot owners enter negotiations with the connections of likely runners. Some may sell their slot for a fixed fee, some may agree to a prizemoney split, some may pay a contract fee to “own” a runner for the duration of the race.

The deal done will depend on the calibre of the horse a slot owner is chasing. To quote the late, great Vince Lombardi, “you’ve got to pay the price for anything that is worthwhile”.

A slot owner wanting a superstar to race on their behalf will have to offer a considerably better split of the prizemoney on offer to the horse’s owner than they would have to pay in order to lure a lesser horse – perhaps even guaranteeing a minimum payment, which is a big gamble considering they are already down the $600,000 it cost to own a yearly slot.

Lucky, then, that there is plenty of prizemoney on offer, with this year’s $13 million on offer up $3 million on the inaugural running.

In 2018, the winner of The Everest collects $6 million, with the second placegetter earning $2.1 million and third getting $1.2 million. Nobody leaves empty-handed, with even those who finish seventh to 12th earning $300,000 for their connections.

That’s $300,000 for finishing last — good earning in anybody’s language.

THE SUPPORT ACT
THE Group 3 $500,000 Sydney Stakes (1200m) next Saturday is essentially a support race for The Everest.

In the countdown to the October 13 race, if any Everest runner is prevented from contesting the event at Royal Randwick due to injury or another circumstance, a reserve starter will be taken from the Sydney Stakes field to ensure the feature has a capacity 12-horse field.

A Sydney Stakes runner can be inserted into the The Everest field, if required, up to the scratching cut-off time on race morning of 7.30.

In Her Time won the Sydney Stakes last year in faster time than Redzel took to win The Everest. A year later and In Her Time gets her opportunity in The Everest when she takes on the defending champion and 10 others in the nation’s richest horse race.