Mike Dillon: NZ racing an embarrassment

He had to wait an extra day but Jacksstar (outer) won the Manawatu Cup at Awapuni yesterday. Photo / Race Images

Cancellation of race meetings because of unsafe tracks just HAS to stop.

Sorry, but internationally we have become an embarrassment.

No one disagrees that Saturday's Awapuni meeting had to be abandoned after Race 1, later reinstated as a postponement until yesterday.

It's almost become a cliche, but jockey safety has to be the only critical concern when horses start slipping as badly as they did in the first on Saturday.

That's not the issue - it's how the track came to be in that state.

There are at times genuine and substantial reasons - sometimes beyond human intervention - why meetings are called off on raceday.

Saturday's Awapuni fiasco was not one of them.

During the first four months of this season, seven meetings - Te Aroha, Waipa, Matamata, Otaki, Oamaru, Gore and Te Rapa - were abandoned without a race being run, though two of the meetings, at Oamaru and Te Rapa, were successfully rescheduled.

Wanganui on November 26 was abandoned after one race, a Dargaville meeting was abandoned after three races and only eight of a scheduled 11 races were run at Winton in November.

The Te Rapa abandonment was caused by strong winds blowing the plastic running rail over in the home straight and a New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing investigation found maintenance issues along with design problems.

Some estimate that revenue lost to the racing industry with just one abandonment can run to one million dollars. There is stakemoney, $340,000 for Saturday's meeting, betting revenue, the connections' costs of owners, trainers, float fees and much, much more, including stable staff roster issues.

Five or six months ago, this column suggested Ellerslie should install a StrathAyr surface, a grass track, initially developed by the Hong Kong Jockey Club and later refined by a Melbourne company 20 years ago.

It has proved sensational at Melbourne's Moonee Valley and in close to 20 years since its introduction there has never been a wet weather abandonment on a StrathAyr track.

It's all-weather, is enormously forgiving on horses' legs, has high load-bearing capabilities, wears better, needs less irrigation and lower maintenance costs than conventional turf surfaces.

Without quotes, it might cost $20 million to $25 million for Ellerslie, a figure beyond any racing club here, but this is an industry issue, not a club issue. Racing clubs will not agree with this, but clubs are a vehicle for racing, they are not the racing industry itself. EVERY decision should be seen from an industry point of view.

It is an inescapable fact that the industry needs Ellerslie as its showcase. There is no better course to win a race on. There is no city with anywhere near the population to draw on.

The industry needs Ellerslie to race on at least 35 Saturdays a year, plus its public holiday dates. StrathAyr would allow that and not see racing ignored at Ellerslie for three months of wet winters forcing connections to undertake costly trips to Ruakaka for a plethora of Saturday dates.

The float fee from Waikato to Ruakaka is about $700, a choice most in Waikato deem unacceptable. Another loss.

The industry dodged a bullet in Awapuni being able to be run yesterday, but that would not have been possible had there been another North Island meeting scheduled, as there were five of the six previous Sundays.

Yes, NZTR will have an investigation into Saturday's track. But didn't we have one of those after the shocking abandonment in September last year when the middle day of the Hawke's Bay Spring Treble was called off after three races, denying horses, including Kawi, their critical lead-up to the $250,000 Livamol Stakes?

Kawi could not therefore run in the Livamol and that abandonment had to go beyond $1 million.

This is not a witch hunt, but in most cases someone HAS to be held responsible. Make a million-dollar mistake in any other industry and you are looking for alternative employment. Any industry.

This lost PR to racing is not acceptable and not sustainable.

The $25 million to upgrade vital tracks might sound expensive, but assume the 10 meetings mentioned above cost the industry $500,000 each - that's conservative in the extreme and remember it's in 16 weeks - the $5 million is a very significant amount.

It's time to make bold decisions.