By Craig Young
PROMINENT race player Bob Ruttley has called for an immediate ban on shuttle stallions and urged authorities to examine artificial insemination of thoroughbred broodmares.
The outbreak of equine influenza, which closed racing around Australia for a week and led to the abandonment of Sydney's multimillion-dollar spring carnival with horses in NSW locked down, was a time bomb waiting to happen.
"It was never a question of how this was going to happen but a question of when," Ruttley said. "It's like playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun."
The trucking magnate and his wife, Anne Marie Ruttley, who is a trainer, have a 243 hectare property at Cobbitty on the outskirts of Sydney. The private training centre, known as Shipton Lodge, is home to 300 horses, of which half are owned by the Ruttleys.
Apart from 40 racehorses in work and another 25 in pre-training, Shipton Lodge is used as a spelling farm for outside clients and accommodates broodmares, yearlings and even a stallion.
Bob Ruttley, who applauded federal and state ministers, along with Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'Landys and chief steward Ray Murrihy's handling of the crisis, knows first hand the impact the highly contagious virus has on the racing industry.
Ruttley has quarantined Shipton Lodge. He believes the equine influenza outbreak escaped from the federal government's quarantine station at Eastern Creek in Sydney, where 50 horses remain behind locked gates. Included among the bloodstock are renowned sires such as Rock Of Gibraltar, Encosta De Lago, and Elusive Quality.
"The minister should ban the stallions for three years until they sit back and explore how this happened," Ruttley said.
"To eradicate all diseases we should be looking at artificial insemination. Sure, the International Stud Book won't recognise us or our horses will be ineligible for group races overseas, but so what?
"Only a handful of people have horses capable of going to these races but this virus has affected around 300,000 Australian people involved directly or indirectly in the racing industry."
Artificial insemination is used in the harness racing industry and it involves a breeder like Ruttley receiving a stallion's semen and impregnating a mare with it.
"You wouldn't need the stallions here," Ruttley said.
"There would be less stress on the stallions, no stress on the mares and foals. As it is now sometimes you have to cart your mares up to the Hunter Valley to be served two or three times.
"It is only a matter of coming to an agreement on how many mares can be served by a stallion in one season. It is obviously a greed thing with these studs working their stallions 12 months of the year or close to it."
Ruttley believes the EI crisis will take three years to play out and "we don't need another outbreak next year or the year after".
"If these stallions at Eastern Creek are not out [of quarantine] until October, they should all be bundled up and sent back home," he said.
"This outbreak is going to send a lot of people broke, a lot of people will be lost to the industry."
Racing in NSW has been shut down indefinitely and Ruttley knows racehorses aren't machines.
"We've got horses here who were going to race over the carnival," he said. "They will probably be sent for a spell. You don't know whether this is going to last one month, two or three."