Numbers low for Oamaru meeting

IT would be fair to say the Oamaru Jockey Club meeting today will not be crowded with horses.

Just six races are on the card and fewer than 50 horses will start.

There are only four runners in the first race with the scratching of Madame Libre, and only five in the second.

The club had called for more entries earlier in the week as numbers were low. It was a quiet time of the year for the code after the Grand National meeting in Christchurch ear lier this month.

Oamaru Jockey Club chief executive Hannah Catchpole said the club, after discussions with New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing, had decided to go ahead with the meeting.

Originally it was to be an eightrace meeting but with the reduction in horses that was dropped to six. Oamaru had a good winter track and horses needed to be tested in race conditions, she said.

New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing general manager racing and equine welfare Martin Burns said NZTR was fully aware of the low numbers but did not want to call off meetings if it did not have to.

He said it was a difficult decision to cancel a meeting, and although numbers were low there were still 49 horses at the meeting and that represented a good number of trainers, jockeys and owners.

As there were fewer meetings in the South, horses did not get the opportunity to race that often.

If this meeting was called off, some might not be able to find a suitable race for another two to three weeks.

The industry would have liked to have had eight races with more than 90 horses lining up at every meeting but that did not always happen, Burns said. Smaller meetings occurred and had to be held at times.

He said there was not a long discussion held to decide the fate of the meeting.

There had been one meeting cancelled last year in the North Island because of a lack of horses but their trainers had the luxury of being able to find a start at another meeting within a few days.