ANTHONY CUMMINGS has knocked back an offer to head Nathan Tinkler's Warwick Farm training operation. Tinkler has spent more than $150 million on bloodstock, stables and breeding farms in less than a year, with the electrician turned mining magnate applying for 140 boxes at Warwick Farm.
"I've declined the offer to move to Warwick Farm," Cummings said yesterday.
Cummings joined forces with Tinkler's Patinack Farm earlier this year at New Zealand's premier yearling sale. Tinkler stunned the Karaka sale ring when outlaying $6.9m on 29 yearlings, but that was made to look like pocket money weeks later, when racing's 'Whale' outlaid $19m on 59 youngsters at the Magic Millions sale on the Gold Coast.
Not long after, he spent $3.5m on 24 yearlings at a William Inglis sale in Melbourne.
At the William Inglis and Son Easter Yearling Sale, Cummings outlaid $7.635m on 18 youngsters, with the majority picked up by racing's latest benefactor.
"I'll finish up training 20 of their [Patinack] top colts, and that will be me," Cummings said.
Cummings will remain at Randwick, where he has 70 boxes, while his satellite operation in Melbourne will be trimmed. Cummings has a base at Caulfield and expanded the operation to take in another stable complex, but that has been wound up.
"[Trainer] Mick Price will be given 50 [Patinack] horses to train in Melbourne," Cummings said. "I had two stables at Caulfield and I've given him one of them. I had taken on extra stables in Melbourne because they [Patinack] needed the extra room. My Melbourne operation will be smaller … I'll concentrate on Sydney."
Cummings said a couple of his Caulfield staff were expected to follow the Patinack horses to the Price stable. In recent months, Melbourne trainer Patrick Payne fell out with Tinkler, with 30 horses leaving the former champion jockey's stable.
The Australian Jockey Club's executive director of racing, Richard Freedman, told the Herald Tinkler and his racing manager, Rick Connolly, had "preliminary discussions" about taking boxes at Warwick Farm.
"To do the job required at Warwick Farm means I would have to be here every day," Cummings said. "I owe a lot to Nathan, but also to those owners that I've had at Randwick for years, so I don't want to lose my standing out there."
Cummings had just emerged from a Racing NSW stewards' inquiry at Warwick Farm races yesterday, at which he was fined $400 for sending the wrong Patinack-owned horse to trial at Warwick Farm last Friday.
Due to a delay in receiving registration cards, Cummings started Miss Cutie in a two-year-olds' trial, believing it to be Newborn. "I'm happy to pay as long as I can find out where the Christmas party is when you spend it," Cummings told stewards.
■ Kerrin McEvoy's winning week got better yesterday when wife Cathy gave birth to their first child, Charlie Patrick. McEvoy rode a feature-race treble at Sandown last Saturday for Darley, which employs him as stable rider. Darley's head Australian trainer, Peter Snowden, said yesterday that "both mother and baby are doing well".
McEvoy is set to ride at Ballarat today and Seymour tomorrow before taking a short break to spend time with his family.
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