Racing will be restricted to a small number of galloping tracks with permanent fibre satellite links for Trackside television, including Ellerslie. Photo / Photosport
Racing will be restricted to a small number of galloping tracks with permanent fibre satellite links for Trackside television, including Ellerslie. Photo / Photosport
Racing's road to a return will become much clearer on Thursday.
And while enormous questions still exist over the industry's finances one thing for certain is a dramatic reduction, in the short-term at least, in the number of racetracks to be used around the country.
The Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA), which is effectively the TAB, will release the enormously-revised racing calendar for the rest of the season on Thursday.
Whether those meetings go ahead of course depends on the Government returning the country to Covid-19 alert level 3 next week as many expect and also the Ministry for Primary Industries relaxing rules around the training of horses and race meetings being allowed to be held without crowds.
Heading into lockdown racing bosses were confident they could race at level 3 with strict protocols but that can't happen immediately because thoroughbred racing in particular has so few horses in work.
If racing is allowed at level 3 and we move to that next week, greyhound racing would be the first code to come back while harness racing in New Zealand would be likely to return on May 29, the last Friday of the month.
Thoroughbred racing will return five weeks later on July 3 if there are no other major Covid-related disruptions between now and then.
Racing will be restricted to a small number of galloping tracks, with one of the key factors being whether they have permanent fibre satellite links for Trackside television, which makes it significantly cheaper to telecast the meetings.
Tracks that have the links include Ellerslie, Avondale, Pukekohe, Te Rapa, Whanganui, Awapuni, Trentham, Riccarton and Invercargill.
Ellerslie don't traditionally race in July and have no reason to change that because while Auckland might have plenty of people, they won't be allowed to go to the track anyway and it doesn't have many horses.
So it would seem more likely tracks like Te Rapa and Pukekohe would host races because they are closer to the horse population, while Avondale could be used once a week for July and perhaps August.
While the calendar will only cover July for thoroughbreds, for that month it seems likely there will be three thoroughbred meetings a week, one in each region, potentially one on Friday or Sunday, and two on Saturday.
New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing boss Bernard Saundry says there are no plans to bring the return of the code forward and NZTR's focus for now is working on getting racing back in July and the protocols around that.
"At this stage at least the two islands will be quarantined from each other from a participant's point of view and we are also working on what would happen if one region had to go back to level 4, how we would work through that," says Saundry.
Many northern trainers would prefer to race at Alexandra Park when harness racing returns. Photo / Photosport
Harness racing looks set for a far earlier return using Alexandra Park, Cambridge, Addington and Invercargill.
The three regions would look to race once a week but quickly moving to twice a week for Addington because of the larger horse population in Canterbury.
In the north there should be enough horses for at least six or seven races per meeting at Alexandra Park and Cambridge on alternate weeks in June.
Most of the northern trainers the Herald spoke to preferred to race at Alexandra Park and that would seem logical considering the biggest stables in Waikato were all closed when the Cambridge track was.
But Cambridge has the advantage of having a greyhound track so can be used for dual-code meetings, therefore driving more turnover utilising the same staff admin and broadcast staff.
The next most important step for northern harness racing is reopening both the Pukekohe and Cambridge training tracks as soon as the Ministry for Primary Industries allows it so the over 200 horses trained there can add to the horse pool faster.
What dates harness racing gets allocated will be interesting because while Friday night is the gem in the industry's crown that becomes less important while people aren't allowed to attend.
So there will be an appetite to experiment in time slots where there is little competition, not only from racing but other sporting codes.
One of those could be Wednesday nights, which has no major Australian night gallops, no rugby or rugby league games so a dual-code meeting at Cambridge could attract plenty of racing and potentially even sports viewers.
While the dates and venues for racing should be confirmed on Thursday, what stakes clubs will be able to race for is still unknown and could remain that way for at least a couple more weeks until RITA bosses get a clearer picture of the financial carnage caused by no domestic racing and almost no sports betting worldwide.
