His father sued the Melbourne Racing Club. Now he wants to join the board
A 24-year-old whose father successfully sued the Melbourne Racing Club is contesting an election to join the board, a week after another candidate pulled out over a lack of confidence in the process.
This year will be the first time the MRC, besieged by upheaval in recent years, has gone to the polls since ex-chairman John Kanga dramatically altered the make-up and future direction of the club by overthrowing the board in September 2024.
Fergus Ewart is standing against three sitting MRC board members – Caitrin Kelly, Belinda Meyers and Robyn Gray – on a platform of growing membership and “financial responsibility and transparency”.
But Justin O’Kane, a former MRC committee member, has withdrawn his nomination for this year’s election a day after a meeting with the club’s nomination, remuneration and governance subcommittee.
The MRC is a billion-dollar sporting club that governs Caulfield, Sandown and Mornington racecourses as well as operating 15 poker machine venues that made a $46 million profit last financial year.
If successful, Ewart would become the youngest board member of any of Melbourne’s three metropolitan race clubs – the MRC, the Victoria Racing Club and Moonee Valley Racing Club.
In 2009, Ewart’s father, Alistair, launched legal action in the County Court against the MRC, The Age reported at the time.
He claimed the club had repudiated a sponsorship deal after he was involved in a verbal stoush with the club’s chief executive Warran Brown outside the Caulfield Racecourse committee room.
The argument broke out after Brown and MRC staff believed Ewart and his wife abused club privileges by bringing four “unticketed” guests into the committee room, and were seen in the “winners’ room” without entitlement.
The fallout ended a 14-year partnership between the MRC and Ewart’s business, Winning Edge Presentations – a trophy, awards and merchandise company – and led to legal action.
County Court judge Graham Anderson ordered the MRC to pay Ewart’s company damages, including loss of profit and marketing rights.
Fergus Ewart works in sales and promotions for his father’s company.
“I have not heard anything about this apart from that he won,” Ewart told The Age.
“The MRC has never brought this up, and I don’t know anything about the case.”
MRC chairman Cameron Fisher said Ewart was seven when his father took action against the club and “it would have been unfair to impede his nomination on the basis of a matter involving his father almost two decades ago”.
In his candidate statement, Ewart said he had been a member of the MRC since 2017 and is also a committee member of the Tatura Racing Club.
An owner and breeder, Ewart also revealed he developed a sports marketing business while working for the King’s College Student Union in London in 2024.
O’Kane was on the former MRC committee that supported the rezoning of Sandown Racecourse for potential housing development – a direction stopped by Kanga – and poured $160 million into redeveloping Caulfield Racecourse. He was voted off the board in 2023, replaced by Kelly.
O’Kane announced he was dropping out of the current election race to independent returning officer Tim Jones of VoteCorp, in an email seen by The Age.
The email was sent a day after last Monday’s meeting with the subcommittee, which consisted of Fisher, vice-chairman and racing powerbroker Jonathan Munz and board member Stephen Foster, and was attended by Jones and the club’s general counsel Sam Constantinou.
In the email, O’Kane said he had no issue with following the compulsory pre-election screening process, but claimed he was not given procedural fairness.
“Little meaningful attention was given to my capabilities, the issues affecting members or the contribution I proposed to make,” O’Kane’s email said. “The meeting did not provide a fair or balanced assessment of my candidacy.
Jones told The Age the meeting had been “procedurally correct”, but could not comment on what was said.
O’Kane also lodged a complaint with Racing Victoria’s participant protection manager. O’Kane declined to comment when contacted by The Age.
A Racing Victoria spokesperson said they did not comment on whether they “have or haven’t received complaints”.
Fisher said the MRC was “committed to a fair and transparent election process”.
“Mr O’Kane was free to run as a candidate, and it was his decision to withdraw,” Fisher said in a statement to The Age.
In his email to Jones, O’Kane wrote that his “withdrawal is a direct consequence of how the interview was conducted” and it should not “be interpreted as accepting any allegation”.
O’Kane is the second prospective board member to pull out of an MRC election process in the past year.
Last September, candidate Peter Brown withdrew from the election process when the committee “heavily redacted” his statement to members, meaning Kanga, Alison Saville and Frank Polio were returned unopposed.
But the upheaval goes back further than that.
In their candidate statements released to members on Friday, they highlighted decisions made by Kanga before they joined the board – decisions they said they were proud to have helped drive and deliver, such as saving racing at Sandown and moving the Caulfield mounting yard.
The MRC said Meyers’ and Gray’s statements accurately reflected the role they played in the Save Our MRC campaign to secure racing at Sandown and returning the mounting yard to its original position.
“Belinda and Robyn are entitled to be proud of the contribution they made to delivering those outcomes for members,” the MRC said.
Kanga resigned in September last year after questions from The Age, and was replaced on the board by Munz – a casual vacancy that is not voted on by the club’s 15,000 members.
The billionaire powerbroker is also chairman of the Thoroughbred Racehorse Owners Association and is widely considered one of the most influential voices in Victorian racing.
He recently drove an unsuccessful MRC bid to merge with Moonee Valley, which would have shut down the Valley’s $220 million redevelopment.
