Long Holiday weekends may be welcome for many people but not at the Rolleston stable of All Stars.
It means long working hours long racedays after major hopple mornings, a big hike in overheads and this weekend at least, a lack of sleep.
“New Zealand seems to plan for public holiday racedays but we find them a mixed blessing at best” Natalie noted
‘We hit the ground running this morning to work over 40 horses before we started thinking about raceday and all the preparation that goes with that.
Holiday costs affect us a lot and it is hard to get by on less staff when we have so much going on”
But wait, it gets worse. All Stars send 6 horses north to Auckland on Sunday morning, Spankem, Chase Auckland, Enhance Your Calm, Turn It Up and Sweet on Me an Amazing Dream.
At 3 am
‘We will be up at 1 am to feed them and set them up for the trip. Natalie said . And Mark notes that that is not the end of it.
“We do the boxes and get the feeds ready then we might get back to bed. It makes for long days and you have to put in those sort of hours. Its not easy”
The mere hours also do not take into account the professional stress of driving top horses in top races. In itself that demands a lot of time”