Te Akau Thursday Update

David writes:

Well what a massive few days we have coming up at Te Akau Racing!

We have horses racing at Te Rapa, Riccarton Park and Flemington in Australia on Saturday and we also have horses at Hastings for the Waipukurau Jockey Club's meeting on Sunday. 

I am sure you would like to join me in wishing the owners of Melody Belle all the very best of luck and let's hope she can go one better than her second place last year in the Group 1 Mackinnon Stakes in Flemington. 

This Group 1 carries a purse of A$2 million dollars and I thought you would enjoy seeing some photos that were sent to me yesterday of Melody Belle going for a swim at the beach in Melbourne. Melody Belle is pictured with Ashley Handley, who is taking excellent care of her - just as she did Probabeel and Te Akau Shark in Sydney and Melbourne.

Melody Belle is second favourite currently and does have so much going going for her - she is at her peak with her fitness, a reasonably good draw and we have the winning Melbourne Cup jockey Jye McNeil aboard. So best of luck to the Fortuna team!

On Saturday at Riccarton, we have the hot favourite Need I Say More in the $500,000 NZ 2000 Guineas Group 1 with our stable jockey Opie Bosson onboard. We will all be at Riccarton on Saturday and we will be hosting an event for our South Island owners. 

This morning at Te Akau Stud we finished shearing all the lambs, the whether lambs have gone on to our summer crop and the ewe lambs are being spread out amongst the cattle. Depending on the weather, we still start shearing the ewes this afternoon and we had another unit of cattle sent to Greenlea freezing works today. It is always a busy time of the year!

Wasn't Tuesday a great day of racing again, even if sadly there were no crowds at Flemington. I would like to congratulate the New Zealand TAB, as the Melbourne Cup sales exceeded any of the previous days in the history of our TAB.

The turnover for Melbourne Cup day was over $26.6 million, the highest ever recorded by the New Zealand TAB and 12% higher than the previous best takings for the Melbourne Cup day which was in 2015. 

It was interesting to note that 90,000 TAB account holders placed a bet on Melbourne Cup day, which was more than their highest recorded number of 88,000 in 2018. 

In an industry where it is easy to be negative there are a number of indicators that represent very good news. 

The TAB in the last 12 months has taken $25 million dollars in costs out of the business. Plus from next year we will be paying no duty which will give the industry an extra $8 million this year, $12 million next year and we have race fields legislation working. This should give the racing industry at least $12 million extra a year. 

This is positive and encouraging news and next year we should see an increase in stakes. 

Best of luck to all our owners with runners this weekend and ...

GO THE TANGERINE!!

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