Racing: Owners dig in over fees

A NZTR computer glitch has resulted in $190,000 of acceptance fees for last year's $1 million Kelt Capital Stakes not being billed to the owners.

NZTR officials were yesterday asking the owners to send the money in, 51 weeks after the race was run and won by Balmuse.

One, the country's leading thoroughbred breeder, Sir Patrick Hogan, flatly refuses to pay.

The money involved is the $1600 fourth acceptance payment, which applied to 25 horses, and the $12,500 which the connections of the 12 final acceptors were due to pay.

NZTR's general manager of corporate services, Campbell Moncur, said: "The processing error led to the due payments not being posted to the individual owners' accounts."

Hogan, who raced Lashed in last year's Kelt, says that amounts to NZTR's fault.

"I have been in business for 50 years and I have never had a bad debt, but I am not paying this," said an upset Hogan. "If a mistake is made at Cambridge Stud, the buck stops with the boss and I fix it up - I don't go asking someone else to do it.

"I told the person who rang me that Lashed is in foal and due to foal shortly and all the accounts are finalised.

"I said I won't be paying and I told the person I don't care if I'm placed on the official forfeit list."

Rob McAnulty, who manages the syndicate that races St Reims, is similarly disinclined to settle. St Reims was a final acceptor, but was scratched when the track was deemed unsuitable. "I can't believe this has happened," McAnulty said last night.

"Are you going to tell me the owner of [Australian entry] Starcraft, Paul Makin, is going to pay that money?

"I'll pay when Paul Makin does and I'll bet he won't."