Racing: Trentham well off track on million dollar day

New Zealand racing lacks leadership.

Months ago, head stipendiary steward Cameron George called for greater racetrack management through fewer tracks and closer consultation on track preparation.

Instead of getting that, he copped - including from factions of his own board at New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing - flak for lifting his head above the parapet.

George won't mind us saying he doesn't have a lot of hair.

Well, he has a hell of a lot less after Saturday's disgraceful slow 7 Trentham track, on which they ran the million-dollar Telegraph.

George had to field off what was close to abuse on Saturday when he was the last one who should have been attacked.

Most of those responsible - or those who should have been responsible - were in the committee room one floor above.

On Thursday, Trentham course manager Lyn Biddle called George and asked him whether he should water the track.

George directed Biddle to his club with the strong advice that it was not his (George's) job to direct a club's watering policy.

For starters, as George pointed out, that opens up questions of integrity.

In strong terms, George directed Biddle to advise his club not to direct responsibility for watering to anyone but themselves.

Sorry about this, but when a course manager has to ask someone else whether to water his track - in this case a track he has been in charge of for 22 years - something is wrong and a remedy is required.

This is the scenario: 30mm of rain landed on Trentham on Tuesday night, taking the track from a good 3 to a slow 7. A freakish Wednesday, with something like 28 degrees and hot northerly winds, took the track back to a good 3 again.

This clearly pressed the panic button of "if we don't water again and get another day like that the track could bake".

That was never going to happen - two days like that in Wellington and everyone would hide under the bed.

Instead, from early in the week, Friday and Saturday were forecast to be cloudy and much cooler with drizzle. Maybe 3mm of irrigation would allow a comfort buffer with little danger.

Biddle admitted that on Thursday night he applied 12mm of irrigation - you wouldn't put 12mm on a track in Arizona if you had had 30mm 48 hours earlier. Trentham went out to a slow 7 again with Biddle admitting, when interviewed on Trackside Television on Friday afternoon, that the footing was a fair bit softer than he had expected.

Hello.

When the cooler, cloudy weather arrived on Friday, Saturday's meeting was in trouble, but all the conditions were clearly visible days earlier.

For whatever reason, Saturday morning's penetrometer read the track as a dead 5.

When Cameron George arrived and pulled an electric fence picket out of the manager's shed, he hadn't walked 20m on to the course proper before pushing the track out to a slow 7, where it remained for the entire card.

It's not the job of columnists to call for someone's head, but something needs to be done about what happened on Saturday, because we've seen it at Trentham and, sorry to say, Awapuni, any number of times in the past few years.

It's the job of the Wellington Racing Club, which has looked rudderless in recent years, and New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing has a part to play.

We should have had the luxury of a good track that goes with running a million-dollar race on Saturday, instead we saw a contest where half the horses were put out of action before the race was halfway through.

Until it rained just before the Telegraph, no more than 1mm of moisture fell at Trentham through Friday and Saturday.

The massive irony is that Queensland and Victoria endured 50-year floods which have, sadly, killed several people, yet on Saturday, Flemington and Eagle Farm produced near-perfect racing surfaces.

We have had droughts and can't come up with anything better than a slow 7 with 1mm of rain.

It's just not good enough.

Trentham should have been perfect on Saturday, instead we saw fields getting to the outside running rail, something we endure through months of winter and shouldn't have to put up with in midsummer.

Owners, trainers, jockeys and punters deserve better.

It's costing the racing industry and, ironically, the Wellington Club itself - through big punters refusing to bet on a surface too difficult to predict form.

It will be interesting to see what those charged with the responsibility to govern do about it.