Horse racing: Ellerslie’s track guru confident he can deal with surprise attack

The Ellerslie track was still looking good as Dee Oyster won the opening race at last Wednesday's meeting. Photo / Kenton Wright

The man in charge of Ellerslie’s racing surface says his track is under a surprise attack.

But track manager Jason Fulford isn’t panicking and has a plan how to manage New Zealand’s most important racing surface until it gets a much-needed winter break.

Ellerslie has become the shining light of New Zealand racetracks, boasting the best facilities, the highest stakes and, just as importantly, the StrathAyr racing surface which rarely provides anything but ideal footing.

But that surface was a little more damaged than usual after last Wednesday’s meeting and Fulford and his team have been surprised to find out why.

The track has a nematode infection, which means microscopic worms are attacking the grass roots.

“We were really surprised to find they were there,” Fulford said.

“The track has been holding up to the racing so well but a few meetings ago, it cut out more than usual on the home bend, which is really rare for this track.

“So we did the testing and eventually it came back with the nematode infection.

“It causes a thing called root-knot, which means the grass isn’t absorbing the nutrients it should be.”

A management plan has been put in place to get Ellerslie through its busiest early winter period since the StrathAyr track was laid as there are races on four of the next six Saturdays, starting this week.

“Some people might have noticed it was cutting out more than usual at last Wednesday’s meeting and now that we have diagnosed the infection, we know why,” Fulford said.

“The grass on top still looks great but the root system is being attacked, so we are working on that.”

The rail was out up to 9m at places for last week’s meeting, which means the Ellerslie track staff have plenty of new ground to play with over the next month, before the final meeting of the season on June 20.

The track is already being treated to fight the infection and that can be intensified over the winter break, with Fulford 100% confident it will be eliminated before the track returns for spring racing.

Ellerslie has not only become the most desirable track for many northern trainers to target but also the only reason some horses are even in work at all this late in the season.

Several trainers have told the Herald they only have higher-quality gallopers still in work nearing winter so they can race on the better Ellerslie surface, rather than the heavier surfaces at other venues without the same quality of drainage.

A drier-than-usual autumn has negated some of those fears, with the majority of northern galloping meetings in the last month held on decent tracks.

But that can often change with just one day or even a few hours of rain, whereas Ellerslie is almost always purposely in the Soft 5 range before race days.

That is not expected to change because of the nematode infection but the Ellerslie track may not look quite so pretty at the end of meetings for the next six weeks.

Ellerslie’s remaining dates

May 16 (this Saturday): $100,000 Cloudsoft Accounting Champagne Stakes.

May 23: Lawn Shed Winter Qualifiers.

June 6: Lawn Shed Winter Qualifiers.

June 20: Five Lawn Shed Winter Finals, all worth $70,000.

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.