Racing: Counties Racing Club loss impossible to assess yet

Counties Racing Club president Stephen Cole says it is too early to assess what Saturday's debacle will cost the club.

But the club yesterday morning put in place a course of action to correct the problems with the track.

"I had a meeting this morning with the course manager and the general manager and we all agreed that the work on re-packing these three drains across the track has to start from scratch," said Cole.

"We have a meeting in December, which we'll transfer, then we don't have a meeting until March, so we have four months to get the work done, but time is not the question, only getting it right.

"We have had plans on the table for a while to sand-slit the track and, if we can, we may even do that while we're packing the drains.

"We'll be making sure in the re-packing that we have the same soil types - the key is consistency."

Cole paid a tribute to Coralie Eagle for agreeing to allow Eagle Technology to continue the sponsorship of the delayed Counties Cup.

"I put two conditions on running the Counties Cup here at Te Rapa [yesterday]," said Cole. "The first was that the sponsor agree to stay on board and that NZ Thoroughbred Racing underwrite any deficit.

"I'd like to publicly thank Coralie for her wonderful gesture, it was marvellous."

Auckland Racing Club chief executive Chris Weaver yesterday took exception to the ARC being implicated in the cancellation.

It was suggested in the media that the ARC had rejected an approach by the Counties club two months ago about the possibility of transferring the meeting to Ellerslie.

"We had a look at out rail placements and because we'd been hit by wet weather, the rail was out 2m further than at the same time last year.

"We also had an additional meeting before Christmas because we're running the first of our new twilight meetings.

"The Counties people said they were pretty confident of running their own meeting, so we felt our track couldn't handle another meeting. Before the end of March we've got four or five more meetings at Ellerslie than we had last season.

"Even allowing for all that, if they had come to us as late as last Thursday and said they were in trouble, we would have bent over backwards to make sure they held their meeting."