Ellerslie's Easter Handicap was dogged by rain last weekend. Photo / Trish Dunell
Ellerslie’s season has come to a premature end with Auckland Thoroughbred Racing choosing to move their last meeting of the season to Pukekohe so they can start work earlier on their troubled StrathAyr surface.
The last two races at Ellerslie’s huge meeting on Saturday were abandoned after a horse slipped in Race 6. No horses or jockeys were injured in the incident.
That followed a similar incident at a meeting 10 days earlier, which while again didn’t result in any injury, saw that meeting partially abandoned.
After initially planning to hold their May 25 meeting at Ellerslie so they could, among other things, learn more about prepping the track, ATR relented on Monday and moved that meeting to Pukekohe.
That brings to and end Ellerslie’s season which started with so much promise after a successful launch of the new StrathAyr surface on January 14 before the first issues with the track were exposed by misty rain at the Karaka Millions on January 27.
The new surface raced perfectly through the Avondale Guineas, NZ Derby and Auckland Cup meetings before the issues at the last meetings, Saturday’s obviously not helped by constant rain on the day.
The general feeling among the jockeys spoken to by the Herald is that the track had raced well right up until Lanikai slipped in Race 6 but that was enough to see the stipendiary stewards pull the pin on the last two races after inspecting the track.
The $150,000 Manco Easter, the feature of Saturday’s meeting, will now be held at Te Rapa this Saturday.
Moving the May 25 meeting at least takes the pressure off ATR, whether they like it or not, and their track manager Jason Fulford can start the track renovation immediately.
The scale of that renovation will stun casual racing observers, with 900 tonne of sand ordered for the track, making up 33 truck loads.
While that may sound like it will turn the new track into a beach, Fulford says it is quickly absorbed.
“We put 90 tonne on after the abandoned meeting two weeks ago and it helped and I thought the track raced beautifully on Saturday up until one horse slipped,” said Fulford.
“But I am not going to get into that, the decision has been made and I am going to get on with turning this track into what we want.”
Fulford says he will be “very aggressive” during the renovation with the key aim of breaking up thatching which sits under the top layer of the turf and increases the chances of shifting once horses hit that layer.
“I need to break up that layer, what we called scarifying, and then it will create more organic matter,” says Fulford.
“That is what the track needs and by starting earlier we can promote more of that. The more organic matter the more mature the track.”
Fulford says a test of a 50m patch of the track using a scarifier two months ago has produced great results but it was too aggressive to be used while Ellerslie was still racing.
“I did it to a patch in one of the chutes to really open the ground up and that is the best grass we have on the whole track now,” he added. “It wasn’t something we could do to the whole track while we are racing but we can now.
“I am going to really get into the track and it will help enormously, as will the sand, which helps fill in the holes we create with the machinery and stop that thatch binding together again.”
The renovated StrathAyr surface will have to pass the normal Return To Racing protocols before its next scheduled meeting in September, as would any track that had an abandonment at its last meeting.
But moving the May 25 meeting creates certainty for industry participants and means after a summer of both success and stress racing fans can stop thinking about grass growth, thatch and root systems and get on with backing a winner.
Ellerslie will be back, and better, in September.
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.