Chief Stipe

I hope not. Wouldn't surprise me they haven't learnt from Ellerslie's experience. Seems to have been a few sore horses after Champions Day.

Horses Return to RACE Awapuni Course Proper This week marked an important step at RACE Awapuni, with horses returning to the course proper following it’s reconstruction. Australian track experts, Flemington Track Manager Liam O’Keeffe and On Track’s Callum Brown, visited RACE Awapuni this week for a final inspection. Following their evaluation, it was agreed the track was ready for horses to return to it. The first group of horses worked on the surface on Monday afternoon, followed by another session on Tuesday morning. Feedback from trainers and riders has been positive, and with just over seven weeks until the first scheduled race meeting on Friday, April 25, further improvements are expected as the track continues to settle. In preparation for racing, gallops will be held in the coming weeks, followed by a set of jump outs on April 1 and official trials on April 8. RACE CEO Tim Savell acknowledged the collective effort behind the track’s return, stating, “It’s great to see that all the hard work from so many people over the last 18 months is coming to fruition. “While we are particularly grateful to Callum Brown and Liam O’Keeffe for coming on course earlier this week, the dedicated efforts of our track manager Daniel Amies over the past 18 months and the assistance of Regional Track Advisor Bryce Mildon have ensured the revised return to racing timelines have been met.” “While there is still plenty to achieve over the next few weeks, the team and everyone within the wider RACE Group is looking forward to the resumption of racing at Awapuni when the track is ready.” NZTR COO Darin Balcombe applauded those involved in bringing the course to this stage. “While there is still work to be done, it is pleasing to hear the positive feedback from senior riders and trainers after the gallops this week. We were lucky to have the expert advice of Liam O Keefe and Callum Brown to ensure everything was on the right track and the Club has worked hard to get to this point. We are excited to see the surface continue to improve in the coming weeks prior to their return to racing in April” Jayne Ivil also visited RACE Awapuni to gather insights from Liam O’Keeffe, Callum Brown, and RACE Awapuni Track Manager Daniel Amies.

Horse racing - I Wish I Win retires: New Zealand sprinter’s remarkable career ends By Michael Guerin NZ Herald· 12 Mar, 2025 04:00 PM4 mins to read Save Share I Wish I Win winning Golden Eagle (2022). Photo / Supplied I Wish I Win has come to the end of a road he probably had no right ever to be on. The brave New Zealand sprinter was retired on Wednesday, ending a remarkable career that very nearly wasn’t. Born with the worst legs imaginable, I Wish I Win went on to win over $12.8 million in stakes and become the most surprising sprinting star of his generation after transferring from New Zealand to Victorian trainers Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman. The one-time Group 1-placed miler won the A$10 million Golden Eagle (1500m) before downing the reigning Everest champion Giga Kick in the TJ Smith over 1200m at Randwick. He almost went one better in the richest race of them all, The Everest itself, when in 2023, representing New Zealand in the Entain/TAB slot, he finished a close second to Think About It. But now one of racing’s fairytales has ended. Not the way owners Mark Chittick and Moody would have chosen, but without one regret. “Moods and Katherine were getting him ready [for the] Ryder Stakes in Sydney, and he galloped well enough on Tuesday, but they thought he was a bit off after,” Waikato Stud boss Chittick said. “They brought him out of his box around 4pm on Tuesday, and he wasn’t right. Moods termed it 3 out of 5 lame, so the decision was made straight away. “He has been too special, too brave, for us to take any risks with. “He will come home and have a paddock right outside our house for the rest of his days. He will be looked after like a king, because he is one.” Everybody who loves racehorses has marvelled at the pictures of I Wish I Win as a foal, the son of Waikato Stud’s other king in Savabeel looking more like a kid’s drawing of a horse than one who would become one of the best sprinters in the world. Chittick and his staff deal with hundreds of horses a year and the hardened horseman believes, with a slight quiver in his voice, what I Wish I Win was as a foal helped him become I Wish I Win the superstar. “When a foal is born like that, it is a big effort just to survive, and that is when we knew he had heart. “I think that is what made him special later. That will to live became will to win. “Before the race, he would give you that look like he was going to go out there and give it his best. “You end up loving horses like that. It is not about the money they win, it is because they are brave.” But the mega-money races are also occasions, and I Wish I Win has taken Chittick and his family on the journey of a lifetime. “Races like the Golden Eagle and the Everest haven’t been around for that long, so to be part of them, it is a real privilege. “For the Golden Eagle, we were partnered with the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation of NSW, which was incredibly special. “Then, when he won the TJ Smith, plenty of my family were there and Savabeel sired the ATC Derby winner [Major Beel] the same day. “They are the days people like us dream of, and he made them come true. “To represent your country and the New Zealand industry with him in the Everest, to know so many people here were behind him, that was amazing and hard to put into words.” Now the career of one of the greats has come to an end, Chittick’s gratitude overflows. “You don’t have a horse like this, an experience like this without so many people helping,” he says. “It wouldn’t have happened without our staff here, Jamie and Chanel Beatson who broke him in, Jamie Richards [first trainer], of course Moods and Katherine and all the jockeys who looked after him so well. “We have loved it, and I wish I could go on, but the horse comes first. So he is coming home.” I WISH I WIN Breeding: Savabeel-Make A Wish Age: 6-year-old gelding. Breeder: Mark Chittick. Owners: Mark Chittick, Peter Moody. Trainers: Jamie Richards (NZ), Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman (Australia). Career record: 25 starts, 7 wins, 14 placings. Stake earnings: $12,844,300. Career highlights: Major wins: Golden Eagle, T J Smith (2023), Kingsford Smith Cup. Placings: 2nd in Everest, Doomben 10,000, Lightning Stakes; 3rd in Newmarket Hcp, Memsie, T J Smith (2024), Manikato Stakes, Futurity Stakes.

Simply you cannot get a decent return on the capital invested (e.g. land value) to maintain the infrastructure required to hold racing. Once you pull out of providing training and stabling facilities on a Metro course your options for earning revenue are limited to holding racedays. Given most of the funding from NZTR goes towards Stakes the only source of revenue to maintain your assets comes from raceday attendances and hospitality revenue. Raceday margins on hospitality would be below industry averages I would assume.

That statement is a little bit embellished. York racecourse is to the south of the City of York and has predominantly farmland to the south. Indeed the perimeter of the City is ALL farmland - that perimeter is about 2.5km from the centre of town i.e. the distance between the Auckland CBD and Ellerslie! Ellerslie has been landlocked by industry and residential housing for a very very long time. Within a 25 mile radius of York there is roughly the same population as Auckland. That distance is the same as between Ellerslie and Pukekohe. The population of York City is about 200,000 and hasn't grown much at all nor is it likely to. The population has only grown 2% in 10 years! York may have a capacity of 60,000 but when was the last time it had a capacity crowd? Over the 4 day Ebor festival the total attendance was 77,000. With the max on one day being 28,000. The attendees come from all over the UK (pop. approx. 70 million) for that meeting.

How does this post relate to what @Wingman posted?

How do you know they don't have a sponsor? Did the Mitchell family not pay anything to present the trophy last year?

Yeah but if they who decide the programme were on to it and knew what they were doing then there wouldn't have to be "factual approaches".

They'll have to do both. Trentham should be the first asset sale. They've let that go too far. Build a course in the Wairarapa or Kapiti Coast.

My view is now instead of worrying about if a race makes money we should be focused on making sure that the money we have been promised is spent on the right things to make racing sustainable. Stakes isn't anywhere close.

That may very well be the case but "think" is subjective.

Been there several times and I'm "from" none of the places you mentioned. Regardless if they were from the Wairarapa and Wellington they were probably Public Servants or Government contractors on holiday.

You are guessing the net revenue. However I agree Champions Day didn't return a net profit in terms of stakes paid to wagering revenue. However do you have an example of a race meeting anywhere in Australia that does?

To have a fair comparison you need to subtract the money coming from sources other than punting revenue. Slot holders are gamblers. Sponsors are looking for marketing exposure and expense their contribution as that. I'm not sure where the Owner money comes into it unless you are calling a Slot Holder an Owner.

Did you subtract the sweepstake money?

Was there no BGP turnover Champions day? Surely they only included NZ sourced turnover? Still nowhere near Melbourne Cup turnover.

Instead of going to your set position of positividdy and laying it on like maple syrup why don't you stop and consider that the people protesting have real skin in the game and have tried and tried to be heard. As for the Trainers Association and the Programming Committees they seem toothless, powerless and/or too keen to toe what they perceived to be the party line. The only time there are changes to schedules is when the "Big Five" Stables exert combined pressure. However they are hestitant to do that when it comes to the Ellerslie track and the all roads lead there policy.

Not entirely correct. There have been many instances in the past two seasons where trainers have protested that they need grass track trials when none had been scheduled. Several big stables exerted their influence (pressure?) to get trials and that was from NZ's most horse populated region.

But they may not be from NZ.

Perhaps for some. I wouldn't worry about the write down other than using it as a means of working out what they expected to achieve profit wise from increased customers and the promised legislation. From what we knew about the financial health of NZTAB before the sale we knew that the business was overvalued by ENTAIN based on those financials alone. There was a discussion on BOAY about that. The deal always did have a smoke and mirrors flavour to it. I look at the 5 year funding promise as a windfall rather than long term. The industry is not spending that windfall wisely. If you take a negative strategic view then you would be spending more on fixing the infrastructure (e.g. tracks) in the first two years rather than throwing it at top end stakes and novelty races. (I think they need to spend another $15 million on the Ellerslie track - $55 million and they have been doing "remedial work" since it was first raced on!). Trentham is a lost cause and Riccarton is lingering (malingering?). Cambridge is dead end. Te Rapa is in sunset and we won't mention Hastings. The biggest worry is ENTAIN are a FTSE 100 company and have corporate knowhow to operate on a global stage. What are the get out clauses in the contract with NZTAB during the first 5 years and after?

I suspect McAnulty and NZTAB over promised with the legislation and the projected financial numbers were inflated. ENTAIN over valued the business from the beginning. The write down is just a paper loss at this stage.

You weren't comparing apples with apples. The large differences in NZ tote pools was when they switched from NZTAB only tote pools to the World Pool. Obviously the latter would always be much larger than the NZ tote. Simply because Race 4 WASN'T a world pool race.

Entain recruits more Kiwi gamblers, but writes down TAB NZ by $322m Tom Pullar-Strecker March 11, 2025 Entain says it is encouraged by TAB’s “accelerating moment”, but has reduced forecasts for its underlying growth.MONIQUE FORD / THE POST British gambling giant Entain says it grew the number Kiwis gambling through the TAB by 10% last year and increased its net gaming revenues by 4%. Net gaming revenues measure the value of bets placed after expenses such as taxes. It said in its annual report that it was encouraged by the TAB’s “accelerating momentum through the year”. “More customers in New Zealand are enjoying an enhanced and engaging sports betting experience,” it said. However, Entain indicated it did not expect to make as much profit as it had expected a year ago from the gambling partnership, announcing it had written down the book value of the business by £142.5m (NZ$322m) to just £89m. Entain attributed part of the write-down to the Government being slow to implement planned technical measures to block Kiwis from easily accessing rival overseas gambling websites. But it said it had also reduced its forecasts for TAB NZ’s underlying growth. “Growth in New Zealand has been good, up 4% for the year and up 7% in the second half of the year, but we're still waiting for the ‘legislative net’, which is the catalyst for the licence market to grow materially,” chief financial officer Rob Wood told investors. “We believe that's on track to come this year, but the delay does mean we're a little behind our original forecasts.” In May 2023, the former government gave the TAB the green light to effectively outsource its entire business to Entain. Entain, whose brands include Ladbrokes, agreed to take over the running of the TAB’s betting and broadcast operations for 25 years in return for half of the TAB’s net betting revenues — guaranteeing the racing industry pay-outs of $900 million over five years from the half share it didn’t take. TAB New Zealand has so far refused to release full details of the strategic partnering agreement with Entain that was approved by the former government in 2023. A request from The Post for the release of the contract under the Official Information Act has been under consideration by the Ombudsman since July 2023.

Yeah Wodeton looked ordinary in his last two wins. The one I like is Tentyris who just keeps getting better and the "experts" haven't rated him but surely they do now. He just missed in the Blue Diamond having to come from a way back late running a couple of sub 11's as well.

That's how I saw it and he lifted again. Only good horses can do that.