Mike Dillon: Denials just add to wet track mystery

The reaction to the Herald's story on Thursday about the possible watering of the Te Aroha track has been similar to a dentist touching the nerve of an abscessed tooth.

To recap, last Saturday morning the official conditions for the meeting were declared as a dead 4, which in itself was a surprise given the good weather leading up to the meeting.

With no rain and a small amount of light drizzle, the track was downgraded to a dead 6 after Race 1 then progressively to a slow 7 to a slow 8, all within three hours.

That was staggering, particularly as the course manager, after our story was published, declared that the track had not been watered since April 15.

Our column quoted a trainer relating the story of a second Te Aroha trainer who saw irrigation being applied late last week.

Denials came thick and fast.

For the record, the trainer who witnessed the irrigation was John Steffert, a former committeeman of the club and as straight as the Flemington 1200m chute.

"I haven't been going to the track for the last month because my good horse [Avaroadi] broke down," he said.

"I've been looking after a mate's farm and on either last Wednesday or Thursday I was driving past the top end of the track by the cemetery [near the 600m] early in the afternoon and the sprinklers were on.

"Now, I'm not taking sides on this issue, but I know what I saw. I don't know if they'd been on for five minutes or two hours, but they were on."

Steffert said he went to the track Wednesday morning to pick mushrooms for the local hospital just as the course manager was emptying the rain waterglass and was told "4mls" had fallen.

There was no rain past that point until the drizzle on raceday.

This is not a witchhunt.

But common sense and experience tell you that a track surface simply cannot disintegrate like Te Aroha did last Saturday with the amount of moisture we're told officially was recorded.

If it did then there is a major problem with the track. And the magnificent surface provided for Te Aroha's Breeders Stakes day on April 4 proved that isn't the case.

Experienced jockey Andrew Calder went to stewards after riding Lord Carson last week and told them the track was slow, not dead as it was officially declared. Two races later, riders were scouting to the outside.

You'd like to believe there had been watering. That would at least mean there were no on-going problems.