Racing: Te Rapa track survives bout of awful weather

The Te Rapa racing surface continues to amaze.

Despite shocking weather the surface for Saturday's big $85,000 Travis Stakes and $70,000 Windsor Park Breeders Stakes meeting remains in remarkable order.

Last night Te Rapa was a dead 5 and course manager Neil Treweek is tipping a dead 4 for Saturday if the weather forecast is accurate.

That is despite a massive 70mls of rain over the Easter weekend and a further 17mls in Tuesday night's storm.

Whatever the Waikato Racing Club paid to sand-slit its track heading towards 10 years ago, it now looks like cigarette money.

It has paid for itself many times over in the avoidance of lost revenue through scratchings because of wet weather. The beauty is the drains laid when the track was sand-slit mean the water falls out of the track days after heavy rain.

"The water is pouring out of the drains," said Treweek last night, a full 24 hours after the heavy rainfall.

On the Te Rapa track of old, one of the wettest in the country, four of the favourites for Saturday's Travis Stakes - Barinka, Dancing Jess, Scarlett Lady and Sharp Princess - may not have lined up after the weather pattern experienced by the Waikato club in the past six days.

Tuesday's Paeroa barrier trials had to be abandoned because of the rain and yesterday's track at Pukekohe races was awash.

"This track is in remarkable order," said Treweek.

"If we get only a few of the showers predicted tomorrow, the wind and fine weather for Friday and Saturday that is being tipped, then we could get back to a dead 4 for Saturday."

That is good news for the connections of four of the favourites for the Breeders Stakes, Magic Briar, Kiwi Lady, Sweet Suitor and the unbeaten Captain Kirk.

Another important aspect of having a decent track to race on is for the supporting programme, which is particularly strong.

Visitors O'Cartier and Bulginbaah take on local Gaston in the open sprint, Shez Sinsational, a stylish winner over an unsuitable short course at the weekend, steps out over 2000m and The Hombre, beaten favourite at Hastings, is in the open 1600m.

The Hombre cost punters plenty when beaten into fourth last week, but he sweated up quite badly and had 59kg to lump. Although going up from R90 to open company, he drops 5kg to 54kg, which will help enormously.

This race will tell whether he's going to return to his outstanding form this preparation.

Most big punters in Australia are win-only bettors. That doesn't appear to be about to change.

New Zealanders are very much each-way gamblers on the horses, but if you watched the major Australian races over the weekend you saw a different pattern.

The win pool on Australian races is always close to double that of the place pool. Watch a New Zealand-only betting race and the two pools will be of almost equal size.