TAB Classic Trentham: Desert Lightning wins after false start fiasco

Golden Sixty winning in Hong Kong. Photo / Supplied

Racing bosses have moved quickly to ensure there won’t be a repeat of the false start debacle that left a cloud hanging over the $400,000 TAB Classic at Trentham.

Saturday’s Group 1 saw a false start when the supplementary, or clip-on, gates failed to open trapping three horses while the other 14 jumped and galloped up to 600m before being pulled up.

When the race was re-started minutes later the three horses who didn’t waste any energy in the false start finished first, second and fourth, with Desert Lightning winning the race.

The false start was put down to a malfunction in the cables connecting the additional three extra starting gates to the 14 gates accommodated by the standard starting gates, with even stipendiary stewards saying they didn’t favour the use of the extra gates.

New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing chief executive Bruce Sharrock announced on TV’s show Weigh In on Monday morning that the use of supplementary gates will be halted nationwide until any concerns over their use can be allayed.

Sharrock also stated that the three major North Island tracks outside of Auckland, which have their own starting gates, will now get their own permanent gates, to be based at Te Rapa, Awapuni and Trentham.

Kiwis shine in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s biggest race meeting of the year was a glowing advertisement for the New Zealand racing industry.

Hong Kong International Raceday featured four Group 1 races and three had a very strong Kiwi connection.

Local hero Golden Sixty was the biggest start, winning his third Hong Kong Mile in a performance that set Sha Tin alight.

Golden Sixty was a product of NZB’s Ready To Run Sale at Karaka, sold there as a 2-year-old for $300,000 by Riversley Park.

Another of Sunday’s winners Lucky Sweynesse, who won the Hong Kong Sprint, is another Ready To Run graduate, sold by Woburn Farm for $90,000.

He is a son of Novara Park’s stallion Sweynesse.

Superstar ex-pat jockey James McDonald rode another local hero Romantic Warrior to win the Hong Kong Cup for the second time in his first race since winning the Cox Plate in Melbourne in October.

Results like those on Sunday can only help the local breeding and sales industry, which is highlighted next at the NZB Yearling Sales at Karaka starting January 28.

Ellerslie passes last trial

Ellerslie had passed its last return to racing protocols with official trials held on the new StrathAyr track on Monday morning.

Ellerslie hosted 12 heats of trials with the new surface given unanimous approval by leading jockeys so racing is cleared to resume with a “soft opening” meeting on January 14.

That will be followed by one of the most anticipated race meetings in New Zealand in decades, the TAB Karaka Millions twilight fixture on January 27.

Hospitality packages for the Millions meeting are all but sold out.

“The response to the return to racing and particularly the TAB Karaka Millions has been remarkable,” says ATR chief executive Paul Wilcox.

“There are a few odd seats left in hospitality but I’d urge people who want to attend in general admission to book as we have never seen demand like this before.”

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s racing editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.