Racing: Avondale gains from BoP pain

The Avondale Jockey Club will benefit from the Bay of Plenty Racing Club's $100,000 abandonment disaster.

Current stars All's Well and Danz Star are two of the prominent horses lining up at Avondale on Saturday who would not have been seen this weekend but for the abandonment.

All's Well, joint favourite for the $50,000 feature at Tauranga, will almost certainly be starting in the $18,000 Foley Memorial.

"That's the way I'm thinking at the moment," said trainer Davina Waddell.

"I'll gallop him in the morning and make my decision."

Tauranga was to have been the last start this preparation for All's Well, and Waddell is keen to give the in-form stayer one more run.

The Avondale appearance of Danz Star is for another reason. Trainer Tim Carter wants to give the talented gelding a crack at a $30,000 3-year-old race at Hawera and believes he needs another run first.

"I'm very keen on that race. It's a nice stake for this time of year, the last decent bit of money for 3-year-olds."

Jim Watters, general manager of the five-club TRAC consortium, says the final figures had still to be done, but he expected the loss from Saturday's abandoned Tauranga meeting to be close to $100,000.

With stakes of $273,000 on offer, the meeting was one of the major winter fixtures in New Zealand.

TRAC does not contribute to the industry "insurance" scheme that replaced the old Disaster Relief Fund.

"This new scheme is self-supporting; payouts do not come from industry funds," said Watters.

"It's $200 per raceday to be in the scheme and TRAC has 33 racedays. The maximum payout is $10,000, so it makes no economic sense to be in it. If we were a five- or six-raceday club we'd be in it, for sure."

The high financial loss resulted because the meeting was called off within one hour of the scheduled start of the first race when the club was committed to pay for staff, tote hireage and TAB charges.

These were on top of the considerable costs for advertising and promoting the big raceday.

A blocked drain running parallel to the outside running rail in the home straight caused the abandonment. The drain was designed to take water running off a nearby hillside to a collection pond in the track infield area.

"The course caretaker noticed something was amiss when he went around the track at 6am," said Watters, "but because it was dark until 7.20am he could not determine under torch light exactly what the problem was, or how serious it was."

In daylight it was quickly clear the drain was badly blocked. Surface water on the track approximately halfway down the home straight quickly disappeared when the blockage was cleared.

"When the drain cleared, water gushed down the drain, which gave you an appreciation of just how much water had been getting onto the home straight," said Watters.

"We called the stipes and they arrived early at 9.30am.

"There was still two hours to the first race and we felt there was some chance the track could drain sufficiently well to be able to race, but one hour later it was clear there was going to be a safety issue."

A jockeys' delegation consisting of Vinny Colgan, Lisa Cropp, Gary Grylls and Bruce Herd joined trainers' representatives, club officials and stipendiary stewards inspecting the track and the unanimous decision was made to cancel the meeting.

"The problem was in the centre strip of the home straight," said Watters. "There was three horse widths on the inside and seven widths on the outside of the problem area that would have been perfectly safe for racing.

"Someone suggested that because the horses would be swinging wide in the home straight that we still might have been able to race, but in the competitiveness of a race finish there was no way to guarantee that a horse would not end up in the affected area.

"The last thing we wanted was horses and riders falling."

The Bay of Plenty Punters of The Year competition was scheduled as one of the on-course attractions and it was not a total disaster.

"One of the conditions of the contest is that we demand that all bets be placed on our meeting," said Watters.

"We told the competitors that because we needed a winner to go forward to the Punter of the Year at Hawkes Bay, we were prepared to go ahead with betting on the Canterbury meeting at Riccarton Park.

"We had a full field of 120 and 89 of them accepted that as being okay. The 89 turned over $84,000 and the on-course turnover at Riccarton was only $92,000. We almost bet more on Canterbury than Canterbury bet on Canterbury.

"Most of those involved really appreciated what we did and a number of the sponsors continued with their corporate sponsorship and entertained their guests with lunch."

The disaster is that more than $250,000 was lost to the industry in stakemoney distribution.

"It was impossible for us to race either today [Sunday] or tomorrow," said Watters. "Under the rules, we would have had to guarantee Otaki its turnover today then turn enough over to cover our stakes of more than $250,000. That would have been impossible. Had we had a lower-grade meeting with $60,000 in stakes, that might have been possible."