Racing: Trainer still waiting for official notice of meeting cancellation

Ruakaka trainer Donna Logan says she is disgusted that no one from the Counties Racing Club told her the meeting was abandoned.

Logan contacted the Herald just before midday yesterday.

"To this point I still haven't been officially advised," she said.

"Someone in the media, who I have a horse for, called late last night and told me, but if that hadn't happened I wouldn't have known."

Logan and training partner Dean Logan had one runner at the meeting, Grand Marnier in Race 6.

"But for the phone call from the friend, I would have loaded the horse on the truck and sent him down this morning. My owner rang and asked who would have been liable for the transporting and I told him unfortunately he would have been.

"The whole cost of the truck for one horse. We talk about professionalism in racing - that simply isn't good enough."

Counties Racing Club CEO Greg Mitchell said when the decision was made after 6pm to abandon the meeting he called in a staff member and they began calling trainers.

"We called the Logans, but they had no message bank on their phone. When we were called by the stable this morning we were told we should have rung the mobile numbers."

Mitchell said he and his staff member called trainers through to 9.30pm.

"We started to get a lot of no answering and we felt trainers were probably in bed.

"I called the [racing] bureau in Wellington and they said leave it now, we'll pick it up again at 6.30am in the morning."

Newspapers were not officially advised. By the time the NZ Herald had been unofficially made aware of it, it was too late to pull the Counties form guides from the morning paper.