Chief Stipe

Thanks. Many seem to be playing the man or defending the man or blaming God. The tracks are the biggest single issue for the future of racing in NZ. Time everyone dropped their swords and sorted. Even divert some of those exorbitant "aspirational" stakes to fixing them.

Another thing to consider in support of the Track Manager is the protocol about not irrigating so many hours before racing. Is it a protocol? OZ Track Managers can irrigate race morning. The 24 hours before 8am Race Day at Te Rapa had forecast about 15mm+. If my memory serves me right. It didn't happen. If it had the track would have been alright to cope with showers on raceday.

Two horses slip: Te Rapa track faces abandonment of Sarten Memorial meeting due to safety concerns By Michael Guerin NZ Herald· 28 Oct, 2024 06:27 PM4 mins to read Ess Vee Are winning Race 1 before the abandonment. Photo / Kenton Wright Race Images There is a sad irony in the fact the Te Rapa track that has carried New Zealand racing through such a turbulent last two years finally had a major meeting of its own partially abandoned yesterday. The Sarten Memorial meeting was abandoned after race 3 when jockeys suggested they could not ride competitively because of safety concerns. Those were first raised after winner Ess Vee Are slipped on the home bend in the first race, something which was attributed at least partially to him losing a shoe immediately before. But after two horses slipped in race 3, jockeys Joe Doyle and Warren Kennedy raised further concerns and after a jockeys’ meeting stewards had no option but to call the remainder of the meeting off. That means the $150,000 Sarten Memorial could not be run but New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing (NZTR) moved quickly to ensure it is run in time to still allow the 3-year-olds involved to then also head to Riccarton for the two Guineas races there next month. The Sarten will be held in the same field at Te Aroha on Wednesday, with NZTR still working on the exact time. “We could put it on at the end of the programme already in place there but we don’t really want to do that,” said NZTR’s head of racing operations Tim Aldridge. “These are top-class 3-year-olds so we want them to race on as good a surface as possible but also give their trainers the option to get them home early as we know many will be wanting to head to Christchurch the following week.” Most of those starting in the Sarten are being aimed at either the 2000 Guineas at Riccarton on November 9 or in the case of filly Captured By Love potentially the 1000 Guineas a week later. As messy as Monday’s abandonment is by holding the Sarten on Wednesday it is still realistic those who compete in it and want to continue on to Christchurch can, with the fact they can fly from Auckland to Christchurch a huge help. What it does increase the possibility of though is superstar fillies Alabama Lass and Captured By Love clashing in the 1000 Guineas at Riccarton on November 16. Co-trainer Ken Kelso confirmed to the Herald on Monday he is warming to the 1000 Guineas with Alambama Lass and she is now more likely to go than not while the Captured To Love team were already worried about the planned 12-day gap between the Sarten and the 2000 Guineas. With that now closing to 10 days if Captured By Love heads to Riccarton it would seem more likely she would target the 1000 Guineas a week later for the extra rest. While the 3-year-old campaigns may recover from Monday’s setback it is another dent in the confidence around New Zealand thoroughbred racing after a horror run with major meeting abandonments in the last two years. It feels like almost no major metropolitan track has been spared but Te Rapa has been a saving grace, carrying the load for tracks like Ellerslie during its redevelopment, Trentham for an abandoned Captain Cook Group 1 and most recently holding the Livamol meeting moved from Hastings. The Te Rapa track has been remarkably resilient during that time and track manager Bart Cowan is widely acknowledged as one of the best in the business so at least there aren’t concerns about the issue that caused Monday’s abandonment becoming a regular occurrence. But for the thoroughbred industry, the connections of all the horses affected and those involved at club and TAB level it was another black eye nobody needed.

I doubt it was done at Hastings and I wasn't there long enough to know today. But all the same the quick heavy shower today at Te Rapa came down around 11:10. The track reading was taken at 6:23am. So arguably any track gallop before 11am wouldn't have indicated how the track behaved afterwards. Would it?

@Pete Lane can you inform the posters on the other channel that I walked the track at 11:25am and PM'd my first message at 11:39 about what I thought. Not that it matters what you or @nomates think. It was a genuine concern I had as my mates horse has already been stuffed around by track conditions. @nomates likewise.

I guess they will be following the protocols and galloping some horses on racdeay at Te Aroha on Wednesday?

Yes but it had 30mm of rain (at least), cold temperatures and stuff all drying. Te Rapa had a different situation.

He is still there and still highly respected. But for the reasons I stated above you'd have to be a track manager genius to get it right with the lack of past investment.

I don't blame the Track Managers at all. Lack of investment is the biggest factor. As for the "Stringent Protocols" - are they stringent? In recent months I get the impression that what is lacking is a lack of quality control and follow up on whether protocols were followed. For example at Hastings did they gallop horses on the course proper on raceday morning?

The individuals I do feel sorry for though are the track managers. They are having to manage these tracks with limited resources and a complete lack of investment in previous years - probably decades. So when you get a lead up week like Te Rapa has had you have very little wriggle room to get it right. The margins are small and essentially your only tool is irrigation. There is no buffer. Every agriculturalist or horticulturalist looks after that buffer by managing soil structure and their water budget. When a race track once the soil loses its structure the buffer goes. Then when you add into the mix zero tolerance for slipping well it all equals abandoments. I spoke to a Jockey afterwards and they were somewhat bemused about why these abandomments were happening. In their experience horses slipping in the past, although not regular, did happen. But that's another story.

It's a bigger problem than that. Same issues as Hastings. We arrived at the course in the middle of a heavy shower that would have been 10 mins long. I walked part of the track and met up with the lone Jockey doing the same thing. I tried to dig my heels into the track with quite some force and couldn't make much of a dent in the surface. Having done the same at Hastings the day of their abandonment I had the thought that this was the same situation...deja vu! Or Ground Hog day - pun intended. I sent messages to some mates confirming the track was firm but I had a foreboding feeling. Did the horse that lost its shoe lose it before or after it slipped? Unfortunately I met a lot of people with skin in the game who had been at Hastings as well! A couple of individuals were very angry. Most seemed resigned. I really feel embarrassed for the mates I convinced to invest in the industry. They've been lucky and have picked up shares in very good horses but their enthusiasm is waning. The pressure for them is on Riccarton now...

Well I walked the track before the races and expressed my fears to about 10 people that we wouldn't get through the day. Also spoke to a few trainers and jockeys.

It won't be the end of story.

Officially off.

Looks like they are off.

Inspecting track again.

It ISN'T a NEGATIVE thread nor was it meant to be a spot for the Kool-aid inspired positivvidy marketing types. It is a thread to look analytically at how the Ellerslie track performed. Which is something I assure many people are looking at since it seems that is where the majority of NZ Racing's capital is now invested. Where did I say it didn't perform "well"? "Getting handy early and dictating from outside leader" would seem to be an agreement from you that it is an on pace track. The question is why? Is it Jockey induced? Or is it something to do with the track surface or shape? I tend to lean towards it being influenced by Jockey decisions and the shape and camber of the final part of the home bend. That is if you haven't got handy by the 500 metres then it is very hard to win and/or make ground from out wide. Kealoha's race was an even tempo race but not very quick. There might not be much form out of the race. Kealoha wasn't that far off the pace turning for home having made a move at about the 550m make to get handier. I'm not sure how you classify that as winning from back in the field. What were the other 3 wins from off the pace?

If you don't irrigate then you run a very real risk of having a hard pan that when it rains the horses slip aka the Hastings bend. Between a rock and a wet place.

The rail was out 9m! So unless you are travelling 8 wide turning for home you should be OK.

I think at least 7 of the races were walk and sprint. The Soliloquy the exception which seemed to be a more even tempo. They broke 1:23 in that race which isn't too bad for Ellerslie. https://www.aucklandracing.co.nz/racing-information/sectional-times/ In other races there were a few sub 11 second 200m sectionals - mostly between the 400m and the 200m. It seems the Jockeys are getting moving around the 500m mark.

I'll try and translate into layman's terms even though I'll be open to being critiqued! Basically when you open any website on a browser it consumes memory (RAM) on your device. A website will load images, code scripts, data and other things into your memory i.e. the memory cache. This enables a faster experience than having to download everything each time you flick through pages or click on something on the site. Some sites are hungrier than others with the initial upload. Some don't efficiently manage the memory usage because of poorly written code. A well built website will swap assets (images, data, scripts) in and out of memory without the user noticing and without degradation of the user experience. The TABNZ website keeps consuming memory as you use it. It doesn't seem to swap assets out that aren't needed and would appear to even duplicate them. Your PC or Laptop has a limited amount of RAM that it shares with everything else that you have open at any one time. If one app or website starts to hog more and more of the memory your Laptop or PC will slow down. I wouldn't recommend opening the website on a browser on your smart phone instead use the app. Although that's tricky too because the app has links to the tab.co.nz website hidden in it. Running a website performance checker over the TABNZ site you get a very very low performance score.

They put 20mm of irrigation on in the previous 14 hours before raceday. Spratt said the track was very firm and that they weren't getting into the surface after Race 3. I doubt the Good 4 rating was done with any penetrometer readings.

In 40 minutes: TAB.com.au still at 280MB Tab.co.nz at 3.4Gb and still climbing.

Ellerslie do it before they race. Do they do the whole width? It raced very firm today. Spratt said the horses weren't getting into the surface. Wouldn't verti-draining assist that?

Just compared against TAB.com.au. That site stays steady around 280Mb. TABNZ has climbed back over 2.4Gb and still climbing.