Secret Passions GARY PORTELLI Racehorse trainer
Gary Portelli’s ultimate Magic Millions moment is still to come. Although he has won the Magic Millions Cup with Testashadow and the Open Sprint with Straturbo, he wants to win the big race (2YO Classic) one day. Portelli’s father got him started on his hobby – pigeon racing. “My diversion from racing is to go racing.” The pigeon racing season runs from May until Grand Final weekend with races ranging from 100km to 1,000km and races can involve thousands of birds, although each trainer is restricted to racing a maximum of 25 birds in each race. Portelli once won a race from Bathurst with his bird beating home a field of 6,000 birds. There are a lot of similarities between horse racing and pigeon racing. Pigeon races vary in prizemoney in Australia from $300 to $50,000; while in Europe and China there is more money. “Mr Zhang of Yulong is one of the best flyers in China. He came to visit my loft one day and his translator was shocked to hear my birds were only racing for prizemoney of $1,200. The weekend before the visit, one of Mr Zhang’s birds in China had won the equivalent of A$400,000.”
There are pedigree theories, sprint races, staying races, theories around the best ways to train birds, and of course, the thrill of winning. Top quality birds, especially those imported from Europe, can be very expensive, a recent sale of pigeons from Belgium averaged $90,000.
Birds are tracked in their races through a GPS ring on their leg; basically they are driven to the starting point, and when they get home, the GPS is checked for their velocity through the race to determine the winner. “Hygiene is very important because they can pick up diseases from wild birds and they need a clean loft to keep them healthy and fit. It’s a lot of work to keep them healthy. Same as the horses, the more you put in, the more you get out.”
MICHAEL CRISMALE Director of Racing NSW Michael Crismale is a director of Racing NSW and has been involved in race club administration for around fifteen years. He has his own breeding and racing operation and counts his Magic Millions highlight as the sale of his Zoustar filly from Gliding for $600,000 in 2020. The sale improved when “my magic moment became his magic moment” when Crismale’s son sold Head of State (American Pharoah) for $850,000 at the same sale. Crismale outlined how his love of racing and love of football had similar pathways for him. He played “football (soccer)” as an amateur, and began his racing journey by owning shares in horses in small stables. In 2001, Crismale decided to embark on a deeper commitment to racing and attended his first sales series to buy fillies to race and breed. That commitment led to becoming a director at the Sydney Turf Club, then the merger to form the ATC where he was Chairman for a while. Outside of racing, Crismale’s working career meant plenty of travel to the UK, where watching Arsenal play live reignited his passion for football. He took a small ownership share in the newly formed Sydney Football Club in 2005. Why football? It’s the engagement by fans and the match day experience.
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While racing produces a couple of minutes of exhilaration, footballs builds you along a journey through the whole game. “You never forget the big matches and the iconic places you’ve visited. I’ve been lucky enough to see games at Wembley, and Champions games in Spain. Both football and racing give you that winning feeling often. Complemented with that, both football and racing give me a sense of community and family, which is one of my strong values.”
