Racing: Meetings on hold until Wednesday at earliest

Bernard Saundry. Photo / Supplied

New Zealand racing bosses are going to control what they can as the industry heads into a rare race-less weekend.

All horse and dog racing around the country remains suspended at level 4 after yesterday's lockdown extensions and code bosses have already confirmed they will not be lobbying the Government to try to race at the strictest alert level.

That means there will be no racing in New Zealand until at least some regions return to level 3 or better, which can now only be Wednesday at the earliest, and there is little racing officials can do but keep planning for when that happens.

That means organisations like New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing and Harness Racing New Zealand have to keep preparing for race meetings that may not be run.

"While we are disappointed for everybody in the industry and all the racing fans that we can't race this weekend, we agree racing isn't appropriate at level 4," says NZTR chief executive Bernard Saundry.

"So we will keep preparing for when any part of the country returns to level 3, which is when we can race."

That means taking entries for programmed meetings, drawing up fields, taking rider declarations and preparing tracks as if meetings were going ahead and then, if the region that meeting is in remains at level 4 past midnight Tuesday, cancelling or postponing that meeting.

"The meetings we are losing we will try and slot in somewhere else but that all comes down to alert levels," says Saundry.

The loss of racing this weekend will cost the industry plenty in lost turnover and stakes, but in the scheme of the racing calendar the weekend wasn't a huge one.

Next Saturday is when the first major race meeting of the new season is programmed with the Foxbridge Plate to be run at Te Rapa, whereas had Covid returned a few days earlier it would have wiped out Grand National day last Saturday.

The Auckland region, which looks set to remain at level 4 longer than the rest of the country, doesn't have its first major race meeting programmed until Ellerslie on September 5, for the last Pakuranga Hunt Cup held there.

If regions outside Auckland return to level 3 first, NZTR and HRNZ will have some shuffling to do to move meetings to areas that can race.

The region which will now be of key interest to most northern thoroughbred trainers is Taupō, which has a meeting programmed for Wednesday that could still go ahead and with some elite level 3-year-olds nominated, could be a crucial early guide to Guineas races in the spring.

With a racing-free weekend in New Zealand many punters will turn their attention to today's meeting at Randwick in Sydney.

Matamata mare Entriviere was still in doubt for the meeting yesterday after minor hoof soreness and a final decision on a start may not be made until this morning.

The meeting features the first Group 1 of the new season headlined by Verry Elleegant in the A$500,000 Winx Stakes.