Reefton

Yeah I knew he did but I am just imagining the glowing reports in his CV about how much he achieved at the NZRB. 100000 to 1 he said he nearly drove it(NZRB) into the ground financially

I think the issue with all these guys from offshore is they are less brazen about writing BS in their CV's than Kiwi's are(a la Purcell's 'biggest bookmaker in Victorian Country racing' And 'owned 5268 horses' or whatever it was). Maybe the average Kiwi racing administrator is a little more coy about pushing his own barrow(for all that McKenzie was supposed to be God's gift and look how he has turned out so maybe the modesty of Kiwi candidates is well founded). And how often do other imports get high powered jobs around NZ? These imports(and there are several in Parliament as well of course especially among the kook Green party nutters) are here for two minutes then they are telling us how to run our lives. The Public Service is chokka with them(IRD for instance - you are bloody lucky to get one who can coherently speak the English language). I can though imagine John Allen's CV for the next overpaid gig he gets his snout into the trough of - 'Facilitated the successful(yeah right!)implementation of the biggest overhaul of the NZ TAB in the last thirty years ... while growing revenue substantially.... '. Of course a condition of their contract termination will always be a glowing reference and an agreement that nobody is to say a bad word to any future employer Just goes to show it ain't how good you are its how effing cheeky you are

Dear oh dear! I mean I will bag shiite out of someone but ffs I'm not the head of NZTR Do these Aussies have no shame whatsoever?

dear oh dear this industry just goes from bad to worse doesn't it

Reefton is built on a riverbed yes but it does not have the same flooding issues Greymouth has and anyway the Inangahua is a much smaller river. The Grey River is very much constricted a couple of miles west of Omoto by the gap the river goes through then it is only a mile or so to the sea with its huge tidal effects. Reefton does not that that resistance so close downstream and to my knowledge Reefton Racecourse has never flooded. Why are you asking questions you presumably know the answers to I have no idea and care even less. Insofar as I know anyway NZTR does want to shut us down because of bog track they want to shut us down because of duplicated tracks

That is for Ellerslie or Awapuni or Trentham or Riccarton to decide. I will worry about my little dump - let their vast array of admin staff concern themselves with the look they portray

Over a hundred years a lot more abandonments at Omoto(though in days gone by they postponed not abandoned - which is what Pam was talking about picking up debris at Omoto - they raced the day after they were supposed to). Up until their first track renovation(maybe 25 years ago) Kumara NEVER abandoned. Didn't matter how much it pissed down the show must(and did) go on. Omoto did not have the luxury of the show going on when the show was under a metre (or more) of water.

What do you mean 'Based on geographical advantage?' Omoto is built on a riverbed and is floodprone. Always has been always will be. The Grey River backs up and Omoto is (among other places) where it goes. Nobody said Wet Coast Racing didn't need all four but NZTR arbitrarily decided they didn't want Hoki and look what the Hoki reaction was? That's not my fault and was not what I wanted. BUT .... for all that none of the Coast tracks are up to the appropriate standards required. They are all too small and, in Kumara's and Hokitika's cases, far too poorly draining. Running there on bog tracks may have been acceptable 40 years ago but it is not acceptable now and is frankly an embarrassing spectacle. By that I mean the Hokitika debacle three years ago of the kid miscounting the rounds and the grey horse coming from 20 lengths last 400 out to get up and win. Yes highly entertaining but really? Is it suitable for international consumption? The number of trainers prepared to put their charges through such arduous exertion is going to get less and less and less(same applies to the Wellington July meeting and, if it happens too often, National Week). I wasn't aware a the time(on the piss with my new Irish mates!) but Kumara was perilously close to the Jockeys pulling the pin this year due to inconsistency of the track where the newly renovated part met the older renovated part at about the 600m. Not to mention years ago when we had Greg Radley here commentating and when peering through the pouring(and I mean POURING!) rain at Kumara his quote 'this would never happen in Australia'. Classic stuff and highly amusing but if we want to be taken seriously? (or for that matter the recent Riccarton debacle or half the other courses in NZ where the first move in winter is straight to the outside fence) As far as holes in the Reefton track goes well no. There have never been holes like that and if there were I would be asking for the the meeting to be abandoned. Until recent ties we had one RJ McCann on our committee would has ridden on a few tracks in his time and I am sure he would be demanding abandonment if we produced something like that. We simply wouldn't race. A few years ago we had the track hammered in the rain by the Trotters a few days before. Due to it's extraordinary drying powers it would have been no worse than dead 5 the next morning(after the trots) so we got a 12 tonne vibrating roller onto it. Gary Foskett came down, saw the roller still parked by the track, and shook his head. We might have had bare patches but they were flat bare patches! And as far a s flexibility don't talk to me about flexibility. The previous time the Trotters hammered it we wanted to move(with five days notice) to Greymouth and the TAB guys just flatly refused. There is no aversion on any of the Club's part to shifting at late notice but the cooperation from the powers that be can be lacking.

Well yes they might but someone has to drive you home! Re the clover at Greymouth it was nought to do with the grass - it was the fact that the track was a bog and grossly inconsistent(not unlike Riccarton and Kumara.) Dead five in one place, Heavy 11 a metre further on. A couple of years ago when they cancelled Kumara I got really shitty with NZTR not transferring to Reefton because I believed, based on recent experience, that Omoto could not handle three days. Needless to say it did so easily. I was talking about that to Peter who said he(and his son Mark) had been asked to have a look by Jim Findlay their trackman and had suggested a mole plough. Ripped up the compacted layers, let the water get away and bingo!

Re the Ahaura Plain idea Pam ironically the very best place on the Coast for a track would have been at Billy's own place. He had that superb 1200m track that so many of his own and other Ikamatua notables used(Barts Best, Cappiemore and the O'Malley charges for instance as well as Billy's own Conbrio, Paratonnerre, Peligro, Perecolini, Prince Rapido, De Porres, Campala, Machiavelli, The Gadfly et al). And room to expand. Sadly gone now with basically no trainers at Ikamatua and it is now cow paddocks. Big problem with that(whether Ikamatua or the Ahaura Plain) - travel. 30 miles plus is too far if you want a beer. Re Greymouth yes it was an extraordinary place to dry out but then they let the experts renovate the track and they predictably rooted it. I wouldn't mind betting they put clay in it and clay on the West Coast means swamp. I remember walking around it during a raceday about 10 years ago - there was a hole on the bend into the back straight you could have put a football in and you would not have known it was there. A couple of years ago they got Peter O'Malley to have a look, put the mole plough through and appear to have fixed it. Certainly much better now than it was but you could imagine my resistance to the idea that Reefton move there. Our average race morning penetrometer reading in the previous ten years was 4.2 - Greymouth's was 6.8! When we had the meeting on Messara it was in the Omoto Grandstand. In my attacking mode of the time I pointed to the winning post and said to Bernard 'How high do you reckon the water gets?' He replied 'I don't know but you're going to tell me'. A minor victory to the RJC!

To be fair Pam two things about that March date they gave up (1) at the time Wildfoods was so big they made more money out of being a camping ground than they would have made racing and (2) Wildfoods is nowhere near as big now(the do gooders got at it and took all the fun away) so the benefit would not be anywhere near as much even if they could get their racedays back

You're telling half the story. The rental from the Mawhera Incorporation at Victoria Park crippled the Greymouth Trotting Club. You pay 7% of land value and given it was in the middle of town that land value was(by Coast standards) high. They simply couldn't afford it and given the trouble with the Omoto track at the time there was no point shifting there. Now that O'Malley has it sorted they probably would have shifted BUT they would be bloody wary of the flood risk too given that the only evacuation option now days is little old Reefton. Years ago if Omoto flooded Victoria Park was where they went. Sadly the Maoris have done nothing with Victoria Park - it is now just a scrubby wasteland and you would never know there was ever a race course there. When I was a kid I had a job at Victoria Park biking the race results to the Telegraph office after each race. Big sprint down the road to get back in time for the next. No Internet or faxes back then.

100% correct on all points though as I said I wanted the Trotting Track and Pony Club there as well. At the time the NZRB had money for that sort of thing. Not now obviously.

I wanted to include the Harness as well plus Pony Club and whoever else as well and would have been an event venue too but no enthusiasm

Where was the centralised harness venue on the Coast?

I put that proposition to the Clubs when we set up BWCR at a time when the NZRB would have had funds to help. Even had the site in mind halfway between Grey and Hoki. But Kumara for obvious reasons weren't interested and the elderly committemen of the others attitude was 'oh well if we have to do that I will just walk away'. Made no difference to me so didn't push it. Reefton was far too far away for us to be part of it.

Not really sadness NM - just tiredness with the continual battle. At the end of the day I can just switch to watching Aussie or Sigaporean or Hong Kong racing on far superior tracks with an Aussie TAB account if I wanted. But the issue is I quite like the people interaction - whether it be the battler owner trainer with a slow one or the very very prominent Mr K Myers or M Pitman(or for that matter the Richards even if I do bag TA somefimes). Racing is a game for optimists (you are always going to win next time) and this constant uncertainty does nothing to increase positivity. Even the AWT attitude of just product product product for TV with no consideration of attracting on course attendance. You are NEVER going to develop racing devotees without making actual attendance an attraction. You might create a bunch of sad gambling addicts (like the pokie desperados) but there is nothing like being there and seeing the action close up. Ninety percent of us seem to say the early childhood experience of seeing horses galloping at close range with jockeys in bright colours is what hooked us on the game and that is being denied the vast majority of young kids these days. From where I sit NZTR is not one tiny little bit interested in that aspect and shutting country racecourses is another nail in the coffin

No hope for the Coast NM and so long as they are consistent I could not argue. None of the tracks are up to standard(ours is by far the best but they are all far too small and the others can be shitholes) As I have said many times if they shut the lot I could not argue but arbitrarily shutting ours irritates shit out of me. I'm the only one with the determination to keep them honest but I am fighting a losing battle both in terms of bashing my head against a brick wall and also from my own enthusiasm perspective(and I don't know that anyone particularly appreciates it - they'll bloody moan when Bernard rolls up to collect the keys to the racecourse though!). The only one with the potential to be improved is Reefton since we (1) own more land and (2) it is good land(not swamp or down a bank from the course proper) but why would we try when we only have three more years guaranteed? Anyway since our day is to go to the all weather at Riccarton they will starve the joint out by reducing racedays to two. Kumara, from what I hear, is one foot on a banana skin financially so one bad day will sink them(especially if it is cancelled too late for them to save some of the raceday costs) so that leaves Greymouth. IF K Myers ever gets a virus in his team or the shits with travel then they will struggle to get numbers given they burnt their bridges with M Pitman. We shall see I guess but we are on the slippery slidey slope as much as anything or anyone in the Industry. It is life in small town NZ but from my perspective my motivation gets less and less every year so why worry? They don't want the likes of me and to be fair I can understand why given(1)I don't fit the profile and (2)I am a big mouthed shit stirrer.

Get with the programme NM - the plan is to grab all the assets of the small clubs who have looked after their money then piss that up against the wall then the plan is to think of another plan(and hope nobody notices that that plan didn't work)

Well that must be a relief. No wonder they haven't been eyeing Foxton up already

Yes and then inevitably you will run into the same land grab that Dargaville is currently fighting. it is bloody sad and bloody disillusioning(if that is a word)

Don't think they are interested to be fair. So long as their fat salaries go into the bank every Thursday they don't give a stuff. And of course when they get their paws on the Dargaville money they will have some more to piss up against the wall. It is just a frigging joke. And we have a Chairman who spends his life in Aussie. Whats that song about playing the ukelele as the ship went down? S McKee is the first really high profile trainer to go though and that is disturbing. I imagine he would have been disillusioned with the outcome of that court case but this was bit of a shock to me anyway

I just see that Stephen McKee is giving up training. Isn't NZTR doing a magnificent job keeping standards, conditions and morale up in the industry? And all the while they hound the likes of poor old Dargaville to try and alienate some more sectors of the industry

Funny those two statements are EXACTLY what I said in my earlier post Someone should have given you the advice CS that when you are in a hole stop digging

Erebus happened because the night before the flight the Air NZ navigation manager changed the computer flight plan to sent the plane heading straight towards Mt Erebus without telling the pilot that the course had been changed. The pilot had been briefed that he was flying straight down the Ross Ice shelf(flat ice) and combined with the white out effect(that he was not trained for)and the fact that landmarks the Pilot could see matched what he expected to see 30 miles to the west led to the crash. He had been told in the briefing he was safe to be flying very low because he(and the briefing pilot) thought he was flying over flat ground not straight towards 16,000ft mountain. That plane was always going to crash into Erebus from the second its wheels left the ground in Auckland. Read Gordon Vette's book Impact Erebus and the Paul Holmes one quoting the cop who found Jim Collins flight logs and maps on the mountain then discovered between him handing them to Chippendale and co and the Royal Commission that all the papers disappeared. Chippendale(and the Air NZ CEO Davis) made a prick of themselves over that all to try and avoid American legal action over Air NZ's incompetence. They couldn't sue a dead man the poor unfortunate pilot Jim Collins.