Racing: Bosses consider change after embarrassment

Legarto is the big favourite in the 1000 Guineas. Photo / Supplied

Racing bosses aren’t ruling out a total overhaul of how tracks are managed after the embarrassment of one of New Zealand’s biggest race meetings being canned on Saturday.

The last nine races of New Zealand Cup and 1000 Guineas day, which was to be held in front of a 15,000- strong sell-out Riccarton crowd on Saturday, had to be transferred to Monday after a horse slipped in race three. That raised concerns about track safety, particularly at the top of the straight, and racing was halted.

Riccarton will now hold the rest of its biggest meeting of the season in front of a small crowd, and with Monday being the poorest turnover day of the week, the change will hit the industry hard.

Canterbury Jockey Club boss Tim Mills was devastated by the fiasco but says the investigation into how the track became slippery after a week of almost exclusively fine weather will have to wait.

“We understand everybody’s frustrations and our team are feeling it worse than anybody,” says Mills.

“But we have a Group 1 race day to run on Monday and that is no small thing because we also had a huge crowd here on Saturday, many of who stayed until when our licence for the day finished at 6.30pm.

“So we have to clean up, set up again, organise staff and food and drinks for Monday and then hold a major race meeting.

“We have heard ideas and even I have theories on what I think happened with the track but we simply don’t have time to investigate those fully yet. But we will as soon as we can.”

New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing chief executive Bruce Sharrock was frustrated by the latest and most embarrassing track issue for the code, coming just a day after the Awapuni meeting was abandoned.

“We are very disappointed with what has become a pattern of meetings having issues, which we thought we had put systems in place to stop,” said Sharrock.

“But clearly those aren’t working and we may need to go a step further, get even more radical.”

That could mean NZTR taking charge of all track management around the country, rather than individual clubs employing their own track staff, with NZTR taking funding used for those purposes away from some or all clubs.

The majority of industry participants the Herald spoke to over the weekend suggested the Riccarton grass was too long, and water from irrigation on Wednesday and Thursday and overnight rain on Friday was trapped on the surface but not drying because of the long grass above.

Riccarton staff mowed the track today and ran machinery over it to help the surface open up and dry so officials are confident Monday’s nine-race meeting will go ahead.

There is no reason for punters to change their opinion on the 1000 Guineas, which still looks Legarto’s race to lose. The first race starts at 12.57pm, with the Guineas at 2.45pm and NZ Cup at 5.06pm.