Fuming trainers demand meeting after cancellation

Sudbina was one of the stars affected by yesterday's Hastings race meeting abandonment. Photo / Race Images

Furious trainers are demanding a meeting with thoroughbred racing bosses after half of yesterday’s Hastings meeting was called off causing chaos with the three-year-old black-type calendar.

The meeting was canned after four races because of rain, with a heavy downpour followed by more persistent rain and high winds.

The track which started the day as a good 4 but was upgraded to a good3 was too hard to absorb the water and it became potentially too dangerous to ride on.

Jockeys and officials inspected the track and the meeting was called off with huge potential ramifications to the feature-race preparations of some of New Zealand’s best three-year-olds.

Yesterday’s meeting was to have hosted the $150,000 Lowland Stakes, which in itself is an important Group2, but also one of two key lead-ups to the New Zealand Oaks at Trentham on March 16.

Another three-year-old race over 1300m was also lost yesterday and it was being used as a key trial for the Wellington Guineas.

The Lowland and the three-year-old race are likely to be re-programmed for Ōtaki next Wednesday but that will be seen as unsuitable by many northern trainers of Oaks contenders.

“I don’t think anybody who trains up north wants to come here and miss a race, then go home, then travel again to Ōtaki for a Group 2 next Wednesday and then back home and back to Trentham 10 days later for their main aim, the Oaks,” says leading trainer Tony Pike.

“These are crucial races for these horses, for some of them the biggest races of their careers, and to turn up here today and have this happen and the flow-on effect from it isn’t good enough.”

Pike’s word will echo around not just the connections of the horses affected yesterday but annoyed trainers and owners who are unhappy about sending horses to race meetings that are called off.

Pike is the former head of the NZ Trainers’ Association and says NZTR officials and trainers’ representatives need to meet as soon as possible to talk about the way forward.

“We all know there are great things happening in the industry and they are to be applauded,” said Pike.

“But without tracks we have no racing and this sort of thing happens too often.”

NZTR’s chief operating officer Darin Balcombe was driving to the Hastings track when contacted by the Herald so said he couldn’t accurately comment on the nature of the track issue.

“There were no reports of horses slipping so it sounds like the jockeys weren’t keen to ride after what they saw inspecting the track when the rain came through,” said Balcombe.

“We are initially thinking the two three-year-old races which lead into the Trentham carnival will go to Ōtaki next Wednesday.

“But before that is confirmed we will talk to trainers and look at the make-up of the fields to see where the majority of the horses in them are trained.”

Fresh off a remarkable night for the NZB Kiwi slot auctions on Tuesday, the news was an unwelcome reality check to NZTR chief executive Bruce Sharrock, albeit one he didn’t have enough detail to specifically comment on.

“Our people are heading there to work with the trainers and the club but obviously it isn’t good enough,” said Sharrock.

“I think we and the whole industry can understand we will lose occasional meetings to things like weather bombs or surface water.

“But this isn’t that and is very disappointing.

“We have to find ways to mitigate these things happening when we start on a good surface and it can’t handle the rain.”

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.