Horse racing: Ellerslie sets track benchmark

Ellerslie on Boxing Day will look magnificent but there is a huge maintenance programme to ensure that's the case.Picture / Trish Dunell

Three days of racing at beautiful Ellerslie coming up and rest assured the track will be prepared as well as it is humanly possible. No, this is not a paid ad, it's simply a fact.

Essentially, every racing strip, whether it's in fact magnificent or fourth rate, looks pretty much the same. It's not until there is a problem that the real extent of the all-important racing surface is brought to light.

Ellerslie on Boxing Day will look magnificent, but little different to Avondale, Te Rapa and Trentham on the same day.

No racing club around makes more effort to produce the best possible racing surface than the Auckland Racing Club. "We are not saying Ellerslie is perfect and we know how hard it is for any club, but we will never stop trying to reach perfection," ARC chief executive Cameron George told the Herald. The secret, says the former chief stipendiary steward, is putting an annual track maintenance programme in place and constantly reviewing it.

"It's not appropriate to do it on a raceday by raceday basis. We sit down with our track manager Jason Fullford and go through every facet of track maintenance for the next 12 months based on his recommendations." Ellerslie is built in a basin and as such has unique wet weather issues to contend with. In a wet winter it dries slower than most racetracks and working with that is an enormous challenge for the ARC.

George: "We are currently exploring every new method of drainage. We need to get the water away the quickest possible way in the event of a sudden downpour. We are putting all the options on the table and will be assessing a number of options early in the new year."

Asked for an estimated cost George said: "We don't yet know for sure, but hundreds of thousands of dollars, into the millions, but nothing is more important. My board here is so strong on producing the right sort of surface. It is absolutely focused on it to ensure competitive racing and safety." Another recent initiative was upgrading the irrigation system. The new system heads lessen the opportunity for wind to misdirect the spray. Uneven spreading leads to uneven tracks.

George acknowledges how lucky the club is to have Fullford managing Ellerslie. "To Jason's great credit he will manage the irrigation 24/7. If the day of irrigating is looking like it will be windy he will get up at 2am to irrigate, his dedication provides our greatest chance of getting a fair track.

"You have to be constantly monitoring the track - things can change overnight, in fact, they can change between Race 1 and Race 7.

"What we do is always under review to ensure what we are doing is the best way possible under any circumstance, but nothing in this regard is an exact science but a lot of common sense. We are doing as much as we can away from racing (leased commercial properties, event centre) to allow us to improve the track's future performance."

George says he has always held a view that the employment of regional track managers may help for a number of reasons.

"A regional track manager model will enable a more focused and hands on approach across a number of tracks with potential for better outcomes. Under each regional manager there would be assistant managers at each track with a team underneath them. It provides a cross delivery of resources, in particular machinery and knowledge in each region but most important creates a career pathway for young people wanting to get into track management.

Ultimately we can provide better training to seven or eight regional managers who in turn manage and deliver training to their own regions.

"It's time people stop what we have always done and support the industry by considering sensible ideas around improvement to track maintenance and safety so we can eliminate as best [we can] the unfortunate and unsafe scenarios on racedays."