Leaderboard won the 2023 Wellington Cup at Trentham during a busy career. Photo / Race Images
Synthetic track racing in New Zealand has just celebrated its fifth birthday and like a lot of 5-year-olds, it can be both confusing and frustrating.
The new season of synthetic track racing in the north kicks off at Cambridge today, where the first synthetic meeting was staged five years ago yesterday.
Since the Cambridge track was built, the industry has added two others at Awapuni and Riccarton and it has now become a normal part of our winter racing life, apart from Saturdays, which have remained almost entirely synthetic track-free.
The launch of synthetic track racing came with plenty of theories over who it would favour, the most common and seemingly logical being because the tracks were smaller, the races would be dominated by front-runners.
That hasn’t tended to be the case, with a surprising number of horses able to swoop to win at Cambridge and, to a degree, Riccarton, although the Awapuni track does look to favour the jump-and-run types.
But what has emerged from the now five years of data is that some horses love racing on the synthetic and would have little future earning capacity without it.
Why? Well that is not quite as easy to explain.
New Zealand’s leading trainers Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson support synthetic racing at almost every Cambridge and Riccarton meeting and Bergerson says they still haven’t nailed down what makes a “synthetic track horse”.
“Like a lot of people, we initially thought it would suit horses who mostly led but it hasn’t proven to be the case,” Bergerson said.
“We have Brazen Affair [Race 5, No 2] in on Wednesday and she just loves racing on the synthetic but she can sometimes miss the kick.
“But she corners well and she can still make ground coming wide on the bend and keep going, which is a huge help.
“For her, we think the key factor is the 970m distance she can race over at Cambridge, which is perfect for her.”
Which is one reason Brazen Affair is the $2.60 favourite for today’s race, aided by the 2kg claim of Hayley Hassman, with her seven synthetic starts providing three wins and four placings.
Her race is stacked with synthetic track form though, with seven of the nine runners having won on the surface.
“When you look at a horse like Brazen Affair, you do wonder if the track helps smaller horses a bit because they might handle the corners better,” Bergerson said.
“We also have Colonel Warden in Race 3 and two of his three wins have come on the synthetic and he isn’t that big either.
“But overall, we haven’t really found one consistent trend that suggests one horse or another will be better suited to synthetic racing.
“All you can do is line them up and find out, as it definitely has a horses-for-courses feel to it.
“But I don’t think it is something you can predict before they try it.”
Walker believes the local Cambridge trainers who use the synthetic surface for trackwork may get a better handle on which horses will enjoy racing on it, at least more so than those visiting from other training centres.
“One thing that has changed for us is we used to put [protective] bandages on their hind legs to guard against some horses getting down on their bumpers, back when we first started racing on the synthetic tracks,” Bergerson said.
“But we don’t need to do that anymore and I think the tracks might be better-prepared and to a better depth now that everybody knows more about them.”
Bergerson said that while racing on synthetic tracks may not be for everybody, he struggles to see how New Zealand racing would cope without them.
“Imagine the workload for some of our turf tracks, which can already be tired at this stage of the season, if they had to hold races and trials all through winter,” he said.
Cambridge will carry that load for five Wednesdays between and the end of the season before all three synthetic tracks hold their Innovation Races, for synthetic track regulars, in early August.
The $75,000 features will be held at Riccarton on August 5 over 1200m, at Cambridge on August 7 over 2000m and at Awapuni on August 13 over 1400m.
Well-traveled warhorse Leaderboard is returning home to New Zealand for his farewell race.
The 2023 Wellington Cup winner has raced in Victoria as a jumper for much of the last two years, with his undoubted highlight being winning the Australian Grand National Steeplechase at Ballarat last August for trainer Mark Walker.
The 11-year-old will return home next week and be set for his swansong in the $75,000 Signature Homes Waikato Steeples at Te Rapa on June 13.
That will bring to end a career that started with a fourth placing in a juvenile race at The Curragh in Ireland in 2017, a race remarkably won by Mendelssohn, who went on to win the Breeders Cup Juvenile Turf in the United States just three months later.
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.