WELLINGTON - Fields for Thursday gallop meetings in the lower North Island will be drawn up on a Tuesday as part of a four-month trial.
Normally Thursday fields are compiled on the previous Saturday, leaving a five-day gap to the day of the meeting.
It had been decided to shorten the gap to two days to help cut the number of scratchings and as a cost-saving measure for owners, said central regional programme committee chairman David Jewell.
It also means fields for Thursday meetings will not be published in the Sunday editions of traditional form guides Best Bets and Turf Digest but Jewell said that had been taken into consideration.
"That's the downside," said Jewell. "But having said that, Foxton and Hawkes Bay have been running with that system for the last nine or 10 months and it appears not to have had any negative impact on their turnovers."
The time of nominations have also been changed. Now they will be taken on a Monday instead of the previous Friday.
A similar change will be made for weekend meetings. From the beginning of the new season nominations for weekend meetings will be taken on a Tuesday, instead of the usual Monday. Withdrawals will close, as normal, on Wednesdays.
Jewell said the later nomination times should avoid the situation where trainers are unnecessarily entering horses at the expense of owners.
"That means you can have fast work on Tuesday mornings and then decide on nominating [for a Saturday meeting]," Jewell said.
"It would certainly, I believe, save the industry money by less scratchings and also save owners having to nominate when their horses are not quite ready to race."
- NZPA
Racing: Drawing-up of fields to change
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