Happy Sunrise

Oamaru is very quiet these days. I think there has been a drop off at just about every racecourse.

To my knowledge it hasn't happened yet and doubt it ever will. Would be very interesting information to see. They seem to have those figures. It was interesting to hear the figures for the lower North Island. Someone would have worked it out. It would not be very hard if you have the time. I bet my bottom dollar there is a comprehensive reports regarding stakes, horse numbers etc in the possession of the people who have made these decisions. Winston might look down on the person whining on the fence at the track but if he wanted that to stop he would insist more detailed information be out there for everyone.

Total turnover wouldn't it be? The one meeting clubs would have far bigger turnover than clubs with several meetings.

That is true. Geraldine would be down because of the weather. I wonder what Oamaru's on course turnover would be? Have to be pitiful too. I thought on course turnover was insignificant in the age of the TAB app?

Fixed odds are not included in the pools are they?

Not sure this description will be well received. Read the article. I am sure you will be able to identify the appropriate sentence it is in. By the way, accosted is a good word. https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/300013477/alison-mau-champagne-and-homophobia-on-the-menu-at-first-party-of-a-new-era

I agree to. I support HRNZ and RITA in their quest to make racing better. It can't go on like it has or it may disappear next time they have to pay their bills. I dislike the word vision but I begrudgingly would like to see some at the moment. RITA and HRNZ are just taking the axe to everything and, again, it needs to be done to some degree but where do they envision harness racing will be in 5 years? Where are the detailed explanations for what is happening. They were totally screwed before the virus, so they were going to need a bailout anyway. It would have been interesting to see if they would have got one if the virus had not happened and I imagine the racing game has dodged a bullet in poor public exposure because no one really batted an eyelid with all the money being thrown around at the moment. What new owner to the game would invest money in a horse with the whole game teetering on the brink? Even with the bailout, I still think they are screwed. Hence the scorched earth policy. The racing bill and its components of stopping off shore betting etc, plus the money from Avondale are the key to the survival. Closing the likes of Waimate is neither here nor there. It is the big ticket million dollar items like Avondale that may well make or break the racing game. Strap yourself in.

Clubs may wish to act in haste to beat the racing bill and disperse the money in their local community before it gets pillaged by RITA. Would some of Avondale's money make it to harness racing? One wonders.

They are seemingly on their own. They do a stirling job for little or reward. Certainly, not financial reward. They are (were) the lifeblood of harness racing and in spite of little assistance from anybody above them they created really good days for a lot of people. Their resolve, especially of the little clubs who were just denied dates, will be sorely tested now. If that generation of people decide to hang up their boots and watch, instead of run race meetings, then the carnage is not over by a long way. The demise of tracks and clubs may even hasten when you think a lot of hobby trainers are also committee members. That is a double blow.

The communication lines are awful in racing.

Everyone working due to the crazy midweek allocation I imagine. Xmas at the races is gone isn't it? It is not as big as it was. The grass car park is not as full consistently as it was even 2 years ago. If it is going to have more meetings then HRNZ or whoever needs to invest in its facilities. Toilets are awful. Now that the stand has gone there is no shade and and the viewing is poor on the bank near the winning post because they tend to put marquees in the way. A tidy up of the little things would go a long way there. Even signage. That sounds like I am complaining but people can handle going to to some country bumpkin race club once a year and piss in a 1920s urinal if you are a fella because it is almost part of the experience but if you have 10 meetings a year then it needs to be better. That is not evening mentioning the women who hate a lack of decent facilities. Places like Mot and Methven need to step up with the help of HRNZ and RITA (lol...I know I am dreaming) to make their courses more user friendly and make people want to come back. Will Mot get proper cell coverage if the totes are going? If there are no totes / stands are clubs going to create a place for people to congregate or sit down? Will sponsors get treated better as they will be harder to come by in the current climate and with tracks closing. No clubs do the bouncy castles things anymore for kids. That is gone. Is that Health and Safety or cost? Oh, hang on, retract all that because there are no totes, no presenters, not even cell coverage, no nothing on course so stay at home people. Must be what they want.

Nobody has said much about Orari having to go to Methven. Orari would have run the best Xmas at the Races programme. Big crowds at their November. meetings. Good track and good racing. They have got shafted. I don't see why they have to go to Methven.

Nobody goes to Timaru meetings and the ones who do, don't bet. Oamaru has poor on course patronage. Asbhurton is weak too. Any city based course has poor attendance these days.

Forbury has been in the newspapers for being on its financial death bed.

Always a reliable man for a good article. THE FIRST STEP IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST By Garrick Knight The guillotine is primed and ready, just one month away from being set loose. The condemned? In the harness caper it’s 15 tracks and as many as 10 clubs. Mostly rural and small-town, Dunedin and Palmerston North excepted. And the executioner? Well, to a heartbroken and disconsolate industry, it’s Peter Jensen, Harness Racing New Zealand’s Chief Executive. Jensen has led this industry-altering change, and many people with strong local allegiances and ties will deeply resent him, and the HRNZ Board for Friday’s announcement. But the truth is this exercise was mandated long before Jensen walked through HRNZ’s front doors for the first time. He’s just the one that’s pushing the detonate button. The controversial Messara Report, released in August 2018, demanded a paradigm shift for the wider industry, a fundamental change in attitude and approach to try and revive dying production. Nearly two years later, thanks to the gross mismanagement of the TAB by its higher-ups, HRNZ has been left holding the can, so to speak. Funding will drop – that’s for sure – and things simply can’t go on the way they have. For two decades everything has been slowly sliding towards oblivion – turnover, funding, foal crops, ownership numbers. You name it, everything has been declining. Covid-19 finally exposed the TAB’s precarious position and only thanks to Winston Peters will we even have an industry for the rest of the year. It pays to remember that. Through no fault of anyone in Harness Racing, the TAB nearly died this week. This was enough for Jensen and his Board to embolden themselves towards change. Finally push the button on what they assessed to be on necessary changes for the betterment of the whole harness racing industry. The whole industry. “The draft calendar released today looks a lot different to the original version,” Jensen told Harnessed. “As is the case for most industries, Covid-19 has changed everything and we can’t believe that it’s going to get back to normal any time soon. “I heard Westpac’s chief economist on the radio this morning and he says it’s expected that the effects of this will last for five years plus.” Jensen says Racing Minister Winston Peters was not so subtle this week when noting that the industry needed to engage in “serious reform” that would give the Government confidence that the industry wanted to help itself and that a support package was “well-directed”. “He made his point very clear that the industry has to change. And that has been his message for some time.” So the future is now. Under-performing clubs and tracks were the first pencilled in. Then those without a decent horse population next. Jensen didn’t go in to specifics, but it’s a safe bet that Forbury Park would have topped the list as it satisfied both criteria. Locals will be gutted - and rightly so – the likes of Graeme Anderson and Amber Hoffman especially. But the reality is that licence-holders in Dunedin have died and retired a lot faster than the new blood has come through. In fact, how many new drivers and trainers have through Dunedin and its surrounds in the last decade? Canterbury and Southland stables were required to get meetings off the ground, and those travel cost savings can be passed on to owners. Timaru has lost its meetings, those dates mainly shifted to Addington and Methven. To play the devil’s advocate for a second, is anyone other than the club officials and a handful of licence-holders really going to be upset that meetings are held at Methven over Phar Lap Raceway? They didn’t have any feature meetings, their crowds were poor, there are very few trainers, and their turnover on a meeting was far less than the clubs stealing it’s meetings. And with Oamaru and Ashburton still open, local trainers still have decent options an hour away. Jensen and his team have dropped the hammer on the Central Districts, eradicating everything south of Cambridge in one fell swoop. The club and its constituents have put forward a commendable proposal to HRNZ to allow them to keep running this season, in conjunction with the Dog meetings. And there are ticks in a lot of boxes – they own their own track, they are financially pretty secure and are fibre internet enabled. But they only have a handful of trainers and two of the main three – Doug Gale and Stephen Doody are at or near retirement age. Canterbury trainer Michael House has kept the club alive with huge teams the last few years, but that will be a short –term solution to a permanent problem. What happens when he changes his business model again? Where does that leave the Central Districts. Perhaps the complete eradication of the region in one fell swoop is a bit over-the-top. The loss of Hawera’s two-day meeting doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense either – a self-sufficient club that owns their own track and is always well-supported by visiting trainers. Perhaps the region might get a short-term reprieve on the basis’ of House’s promised support this season. But the writing is on the wall – there are bugger all trainers south of Cambridge and, as Jensen rightly points out, you can’t justify the upkeep of so many tracks there. “The compelling number for me was that 28% of standardbreds are trained in the North Island. “And only 3% are trained south of Cambridge. “That in itself paints a picture that the clubs cannot run full race meetings within their own region without the help of Waikato and Canterbury. “To me, that’s a very tenuous business case. Especially when they are so reliant on Michael, who is to be commended, but could easily change direction without much notice.” I asked Jensen flat out, whether any one decision was harder than the others, and he initially declined, saying, perhaps somewhat tokenistically that, when you are dealing with people’s livelihoods, every decision is a tough one. But towards the end of the interview he left it slip that canning racing from Waterlea in Blenheim was a “particularly difficult” decision. “Part of it was that the thoroughbreds aren’t going to race there, and moving forward that gives some uncertainty about the costs surrounding the track.” Neighbouring Nelson stays, though Michael House made a salient point that Blenheim had “clearly superior” facilities and was a vital base for horses embarking or disembarking from the Wellington-Picton Ferry. You have to feel for the hard-working committee at Waimate, who spent so much time, effort and money rebuilding the facilities after they were devastated by a storm. But again, the cold-hard reality is that there’s what? One or two trainers there? And every other trainer and driver will still go to whatever meeting replaces it. It’s a victim of its own location, unfortunately. And that brings us, finally, to Southland. Where, contrary to the tone you might have picked up through this piece, I simply cannot understand why the decision has been made to strip meetings from Gore, Wyndham and Roxburgh. Roxburgh’s once-a-year-meeting is part of that awesome and well-supported Central Otago Christmas circuit. Yes, the club keeps their date, but they have to race on the grass at Cromwell an hour away. Why not just keep it on the all-weather? Southern Harness is the model the rest of the country should be aspiring to. In the north we have an arrogant, alpha club in Auckland, content to push their counterparts down the highway at Cambridge off the cliff at any available opportunity. When they should have presented a united front, Auckland went in to bat for itself last month, trying to downtrou’ Cambridge in the process. Anyway, I digress. Down in Southland, they have streamlined their model and it just works so well. Sure, they don’t race for pre-Covid Auckland levels of money, but they have even fields, robust programming and all tenant clubs buying in to the philosophy they’ve adopted. Wyndham own their own track, they’re a profitable club and have a racing surface and style that punters, trainers and drivers like. They don’t have a heap of meetings, but they hold their own, and there is no discernible reason for them to be given the ass at this point in time. The reason given to the club, rather feebly if we’re being frank, was fibre-optic internet connectivity. The same applied down the road in Gore, its Eastern Southland sister club. Both are flush with sponsors and enjoy the usual reliable turnover of the Southland meetings. Whatever reasoning is applied, it can’t be altogether substantive or justifiable. Clubs now have a month to plead their case for reinstatement, and you can be sure-and-certain every single one of them will do so. ensen was at pains to assure Harnessed that this was not “all she wrote” and there would be genuine and prolonged thought given to compelling arguments. And then he said something vitally important. Something that I daresay every person at every effected club, in every effected region needs to give consideration to. “I just ask clubs, that when they’re doing it, they look forward. To the future. “Try and imagine what that it looks like and how their club can be a meaningful part of that.” Sage words. And a salient point. Put your own preferences aside for one moment and ask, what will generate the most turnover for the industry? The fact Addington’s dates jump from 33 to 77 next season, probably answers that.

Yip. They have euthanized what was a very enjoyable grass track circuit around the North Island a few years ago.

I think there is a difference sometimes. I used to bet on Forbury quite a bit but in recent times it has got harder and harder because of either a dominant favourite with a formline of 687X94 against similar horses or a Cran Dalgety first starter paying $1.40. At a guess, I would say the fields are smaller in recent times too and I would say fewer and fewer Canterbury horses go down now. Waimate, had competitive and big fields. The value was there to be had. Eg Kiwi X Factor winning at 8s after a very tidy trial win at Rangiora from memory. I don't bet into quality races like the NZ Cup. I prefer the lower stuff but sometimes the fields at Timaru and Forbury present very little in the way of punting.

Waimate was a Sunday. Timaru races on random weekdays.

Those are the questions that have to be answered by RITA and HRNZ or do they see it as collateral damage and no major loss?

Timaru fields are more similar to Forbury than anywhere else and are probably under performing in the betting stakes. The gallops had to be kept because of the statue lol.

Interesting to have 2 meetings at Cromwell. Can't be distance due to it being near enough to Omakau and Cromwell. They might be emphasizing the grass track aspect to get more horses. I have felt the whole 3 meeting in 6 days has battled recently. Less and less Canterbury horses go down there but the 2 day aspect might encourage more to go as it offers two bites of the central cherry. That said, Roxburgh had a special place in harness. I just wish RITA would explain themselves fully so people could understand the logic of their decisions. Is there any explanation anywhere?

https://www.rita.org.nz/sites/default/files/2020.21 Draft TWO Racing Calendar for Industry Consultation (2).pdf

So here is my question, does this mean the venues will be brought back the following season or does it mean see you later forever? This needs to be spelt out very clearly. Do those clubs fold as entities? because even if the likes of Wyndham race at Invercargill, or Waimate at Oamaru, why would they bother as it is not benefiting their own community?

Does anyone have a copy of the draft? 15 May 2020 Consultation with the racing industry on a revised racing calendar from August 2020 to July 2021, which reflects the significant impact of Covid-19 on domestic racing and the critical need for racing industry reform, got underway today. The implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on the TAB and the wider industry has necessitated an immediate overhaul of the original, ‘pre-Covid’ draft racing calendar for 2020/21 and proposes a reduction of total meetings, including 43 fewer equine meetings, and with no betting licenses for 14 venues being used for any racing which had been previously allocated in the pre-Covid draft calendar. Dean McKenzie, Executive Chair, Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) said the racing calendar was a critical driver to enable the recovery of New Zealand racing and an essential part of the overall reform programme being led by RITA and the three racing codes. “The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on racing, and accelerated the need for significant change across all levels of the industry. “The leaders of New Zealand racing have repeatedly talked over decades about change but not been courageous enough to address the critical need for venue intensification. Repeated reports on the industry, including most recently by John Messara, as well as the industry-led future venue plan have identified that there were too many racing venues and this was a commercial drain on limited industry resources. Covid-19 leaves us with no other choice but to act. “Over the last two years the racing Codes have undertaken considerable work identifying their optimal future venue footprint. The impact of Covid-19 has created greater financial need to accelerate the implementation of the codes’ plans.” A key principle of the proposed changes are more meetings closer to where the horse and greyhound population is trained, with resulting increased intensification at venues. “Ensuring meetings are located as close as possible, as often as possible to where the horse and dog population is located will result in improved net returns to the industry,” said McKenzie. “The racing calendar generates the revenue for the Codes that ultimately end up in the stakes that drive domestic racing. “The draft calendar means that some venues will miss out on racing licenses, and that is regrettable, but Covid-19 makes servicing almost 60 venues simply unsustainable and unappealing to the owners and participants who travel the length and breadth of NZ for meetings. Maximising the total returns to all of racing is the goal of the racing calendar and with revenue likely to be further challenged next year we have to cut costs and deliver the most efficient programme of racing possible.” Bernard Saundry, CEO, New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing said, “Every thoroughbred racing club in New Zealand has a history and a part to play. NZTR has done significant work over the past 18 months on a venue plan which will future proof the racing industry. We recognise that the calendar for 2020-21 looks very different to previous seasons with fewer meetings at fewer venues. The industry cannot survive, let alone move ahead, if we try to fit 2020s racing into a mould which was created last century.” Peter Jensen, CEO, Harness Racing New Zealand said, “The Government and industry participants have for some time been calling for meaningful change to the way racing is run. HRNZ and the wider industry needs to change and reposition itself to make its offer attractive and relevant to a wider audience. The Covid-19 pandemic has been the catalyst to accelerate the pace of change, however the reality is that proposed changes to our venue footprint are required to help harness racing become more sustainable, through increasing turnover, improving club’s stakes to funding ratio, and decreasing costs to RITA, clubs, licensees and owners.” Michael Dore, Racing Operations and Welfare Manager of Greyhound Racing New Zealand said, “"For a number of years the GRNZ calendar has more-or-less followed the same weekly pattern of meetings. Travel restrictions imposed by the return from Covid-19 meant changes to our Monday and Tuesday routines. We are committed to maintaining a safe and sustainable racing product and the current situation gives us the opportunity to re-evaluate our racing product and continue with this pattern into the new season to minimise owners’ costs. The consultation period will allow some time for further evaluation of these changes before progressing to the Final Calendar.” McKenzie said this week’s announcement by the Government of two synthetic racing tracks didn’t feature in the draft racing calendar for 2020/21 as it was unlikely these would be built in time to support racing this season. “The draft calendar includes six meetings at the Cambridge synthetic track, which is currently being developed. Having another two world-class synthetic tracks operational in the near future will provide a further opportunity to review our racing venue footprint and ensure the industry delivers on the ambition laid by the Racing Minister ‘to make racing great again’. “These proposals are challenging for everyone in the industry, however action is required as the status quo is not sustainable. While RITA would like to see some further alignment between the codes with their plans going forward with some venues, the progress made with this calendar is very encouraging. RITA commends the racing codes for their leadership and courage in embracing change and making decisions in the best overall interests of the industry’, said McKenzie. A draft racing calendar has been released to racing clubs with consultation on the draft closing on 15 June. It is expected a final calendar will be released on 3 July, prior to the commencement of a new year of racing on August 1.