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The rebuild of the Ellerslie racetrack has passed a crucial stage and is now rated “90 per cent certain” to hold New Zealand racing’s most glamorous meeting.
Auckland Thoroughbred Racing chief executive Paul Wilcox says track developers StrathAyr are thrilled with how the track has bedded in so the clubhas started planning to hold the $4.25 million Karaka Millions on January 27 back at its traditional home.
The Karaka Million was staged at Pukekohe this year as Ellerslie’s track underwent a huge rebuild in which the entire racing surface was dug up and replaced with a new StrathAyr track.
That new track will drain better and eventually enable Ellerslie to race more often in conjunction with ATR’s other track Pukekohe Park, which handled a huge summer workload well and will be home of both Boxing Day and New Year’s Day’s huge meetings this season.
But as good as Pukekohe has been, racing fans, particularly those who live in Auckland, want Ellerslie back racing and they look set to get their wish for the Karaka Millions meeting.
“They will still be part of the process for the next year but the track is now back under the management of our track manager, Jason Fulford.”
Wilcox says if industry participants needed any reassurance of how well the new surface is growing, Fulford aerated the track yesterday, which means driving spikes deep into the surface to enable oxygen to get down to the roots.
“After what we saw and were told last week Jason doesn’t need to treat the track with kid gloves, he is treating it as a racetrack.”
That will be music to the ears of racing fans who want to see Ellerslie’s official relaunch on Karaka Millions night, as well as those who like the huge party atmosphere at Ellerslie’s carnivals which has made it one of New Zealand’s biggest social attractions.
But before ATR start selling tickets to the Karaka Millions, the new surface needs to pass the Return to Racing Protocols and be ticked off by the Racing Integrity Board, NZ Thoroughbred Racing and most importantly trainers and jockeys.
That schedule will start with up to 20 horses being brought to Ellerslie to gallop in pairs in late November after which jumpouts will be held a week or two later and then official trials in mid-December.
“If all those stages are ticked off satisfactorily we will have our first meeting back on January 14 [Sunday] and then the major official re-opening on Karaka Millions night,” Wilcox says.
That shapes up as one of New Zealand racing’s great occasions as it will be the first time three races worth $1 million or more will be held on the same programme here.
The line-up will consist of the $1.5m TAB KM three-year-old, the $1m TAB KM two-year-old, the new $1m Elsdon Park Aotearoa Classic for four-year-olds, the $300,000 Westbury Classic and the Brighthill Yearlings Concorde and Cambridge Stud Almanzor Trophy both for $225,000 each.
That is $4.25m worth of races at the twilight meeting to be followed by an after-party and then the Karaka yearling sales starting the next day.
It is the meeting, and for some a week, New Zealand racing has been craving to finally put an exclamation mark on one of the most positive years in the racing industry’s history.
So far, the track conditions are looking good.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
