Chief Stipe

An the optimal foal crop graduates stay racing longer.

That raises the point that if the gates broke down during a meeting would they abandon the meeting from that point on.

Very good point. Although ATR just spent approximately $44,000 on sand before transport and spreading.

Listening to the explanation on Trackside I got the impression that the trailer has a custom connection to the truck unit. Assuming it was the truck unit that broke down and not the trailer what stops them from having a standard connection i.e. so any truck cab large enough can cart the tralier? Who owns Northern Raceday Services?

So what you are saying is the Ellerslie gates can only be used at Ellerslie. Yet Auckland Thoroughbred Racing now runs the meetings at both tracks. The nearest gates then are 120km away.

Early Crow - just like Leo.

One person with a phone is on the other side of the fence at the start. The alleged Curator is also on the other side of the fence. I don't see anyone with cellphones on the track itself.

Don't you mean doesn't the Auckland Racing Club racing at Pukekohe have gates they can move from Ellerslie?

MEETING NEWS Pukekohe Meeting Abandoned Today’s ATR Meeting at Pukekohe Park has been abandoned due to a mechanical failure with the truck carrying the starting gates. More information will follow.

Seriously though - assuming it isn't an excuse for the state of the track - WTF couldn't they get the gates there last night!!!

Supposedly because the Truck carrying the starting gates couldn't get there. Perhaps Avondale paddlocked them!!! MEETING NEWS Pukekohe Meeting Abandoned Today’s ATR Meeting at Pukekohe Park has been abandoned due to a mechanical failure with the truck carrying the starting gates. More information will follow.

Are you sure he is only your Uncle?

Still doesn't negate the fact that it is ultimately the Trainers responsibility. The Vet made an assessment and didn't recommend x-rays in one case and did in the other. Do you want every dog that displays soreness to be x-rayed?

That's incorrect. There has been more than one meeting transferred. One today at Pukekohe which is at least the second. Don't forget the calendar was readjusted as well. Which is a bit like rewriting or manufacturing your own evidence. Guerin has just taken the lazy journo approach and added a couple of paragraphs and name to a press release.

Pure spin. Marketing hyperbole at best. Hasn't improved much in 33 years.

Wilcox used that explanation after the KM debacle and the "fix" after that was to remedy the "getting the toe in". An abandoment or two and closing the course plus 800 more tonnes of sand will fix the toe in. "Hunches all around me, so the feeling grows...." Where's MIA Sharrock?

Why don't they just remove the grass and call it an AWT? Begs the question though - why didn't they get it right the first time? If you buy a Ferrari you expect to be able to drive it more than once. $55m was supposed to buy a premium track.

Auckland Thoroughbred Racing chief confident in Ellerslie Racecourse track refurbishment www.nzherald.co.nz It will be the zenith of 22 meetings Ellerslie hosts next season, which means that getting the new StrathAyr surface right and consistent is crucial after a messy end to this season. Auckland Thoroughbred Racing chief executive Paul Wilcox is confident the surface will deliver on its earlier promise even though it got slippery after rain late on Karaka Million night in January and then two later meetings saw partial abandonments. Those teething problems saw ATR move one late-season meeting to Pukekoke so Ellerslie’s track renovation work could start earlier and horses returned to the home of Auckland racing for the first time on Monday. Six horses galloped in three pairs ridden by top jockeys Kennedy and Craig Grylls and both were happy with the surface, which the horses were able to get their hooves into rather than staying on top of. The inability for horses to always “get their toe in” to the new surface was a key reason, when combined with rain, why it became slippery in its initial season, albeit most meetings went off without a hitch. “Our team has done an enormous amount of work on the surface,” Wilcox says. “The top surface was broken right up to take the tension out of it and 450 tonne of sand was added, with that work to continue and another 350 tonne of sand to be added. “We have been working really closely with experts like Liam O’Keeffe, the track manager at Flemington, and Chris Hay from Elwick [Hobart, also a StraythAyr track] and they are both really confident we have got it right. “So Monday was an important first step and to hear Warren and Craig so happy was very satisfying. “We will have more gallops, jump-outs and then trials and, all going well, we will be back racing on September 21.” Ellerslie is in for a summer of such scale that most in the New Zealand racing industry are still struggling to get their heads around it. As well as Group 1 racing at Christmas, it will have the Karaka Million in late January, which next season will also include the Railway, moved from New Year’s Day and boosted to $600,000. Then looms Champions Day and New Zealand thoroughbred racing’s first slot race, the NZB Kiwi as the centrepiece of the strongest race meeting yet held in this country. “I know we really shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to another jurisdiction but to have a $9m race meeting [in its first year] puts Champions Day up there with Australia’s biggest racedays,” Wilcox says. “So we are very excited and Monday was one of the first steps toward all that.” 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.

Meanwhile who got the $5m for delivering nothing? Is NZTR trying to rake some of it back? Cameron George before you scarper can you comment? Or even MIA Sharrock?

Not as popular as turf.

Yep and they massage the colour as well.

Obviously not enough sand in this profile.