Te Akau Sunday Update

David writes:

Racing survives around the world despite racing administrators doing their best to stuff it up.  There are a few issues that drive me mad and I am going to outline these.

One of the reasons racing in Singapore and Hong Kong is booming is because they only have turf club/racing club in Singapore to maintain and two in Hong Kong.  In New Zealand we have about 50 - and each with its own track!

I often hear people say that we have too many tracks in New Zealand and of course they are correct - however at this time of the year, we need as many tracks as we can to cater for the trials and for Spring racing.

Surely a blind man can see that we need an all-weather track in the North!  We could trial each week on it and race on it through the winter months of July and August.  In the Auckland/Waikato area we have about 60 inches or 1500mls of rain a year and it's not practical to have a good grass track for racing and trials during these wet months.

So why haven't we got an all-weather track?  Well I am reliably told that the Racing Board was happy to look into funding some two to three years ago until the idea was bagged by some senior trainers.  I just find that really hard to believe.

We seem to race every two to three weeks at Ruakaka which is a great winter track but has the Board in Wellington taken into account the cost to owners of taking all these horses to Ruakaka to race?  I estimate that it would cost around $5000 per race just to transport the runners north - surely an all-weather track in this climate is an essential and the only way to really progress the industry.

There have been a lot of abandoned race meetings and trial fixtures recently.  This costs the galloping code dearly, especially when you read Section 16 of the Racing Amendment Bill.  The other two codes must shake their heads at the galloping code attempting to maintain all these grass tracks.

Another area that I am frustrated about is NZTR's attempt to reduce the number of races we hold each raceday.  For example one meeting at Ruakaka there were seven races - were there sufficient horses to have nine races?  It certainly looks that way.

Let me give you an example - race 5 is a maiden race over 1200m with 20 acceptors and some who nominated who did not get into the field.  There are six horses on the ballot so 14 will run.  That means that from 14 runners, 13 will be trying to get into the same race in two weeks' time and only one of the 14 horses will be available to race next time in a rating 65 event.  Then administrators wonder why there are insufficient horses to fill Rating 65 fields.  Exactly the same example takes place in race 7 at Ruakaka.

There is absolutely no reason why there couldn't be nine races at Ruakaka.  It is far most cost effective for trainers and also to send Trackside and its team all the way north for nine races.  The extra two races also mean that you have two more sets of happy owners, happy trainers, happy riders and more horses going through the grades.

Another issue in my mind at the moment is the lack of maiden races for three year olds.  It is a big ask to get a horse, that in most cases is still only really a two year old, having to race against four, five and six year olds.

Do the administrators who make these decisions ever ask the people putting on the show what is required or are these decisions made by people who don't race horses?

I can tell the powers that be that cutting the number of races back is NOT the way forward and if owners have to race in 14, 16 and 18 horse fields they will very quickly realise it's all just too hard and will lose interest.  We should be running at least nine races each meeting or at least that should be the aim.

It was a disappointing result last night with the rugby in Sydney but it could be a blessing long-term for the big assignments coming up for the men.  What a great game it will be next Saturday at Eden Park.

I am off to Matamata tomorrow to inspect all the horses and will be at the track on Tuesday morning.  However tonight we will be glued to the TV watching all the Singapore races - Mark has continued on his winning way, claiming the major race on Friday night with My Lucky Strike and he has ten runners entered tonight.  Mark and his team have enjoyed a wonderful season thus far and we look forward to every Friday and Saturday to see our horses race and cheer the team on.

Have a great week!