Jockeys have faith in track despite abandonment
Senior jockey Matt Cameron says he was left with no choice but to alert stewards to the slip that caused the abandonment of Saturday’s $150,000 Manco Easter at Ellerslie.
But Cameron says he is certain the new StrathAyr track will eventually “be brilliant” once it has had time to develop.
Ellerslie’s roller-coaster launch of the new surface hit its lowest point on Saturday when the Easter and the last race at the major meeting were abandoned after Cameron’s mount Lanikai slipped at the 400m mark.
Cameron felt the slip but then watched it replayed with several other senior jockeys before deciding to inform the stewards.
Stewards met with all jockeys and club officials, inspected the track at the 400m point, and after finding more than one slip mark, the decision was taken to abandon the last two races.
The Manco Easter will now be run at Te Rapa this Saturday so won’t be lost for 2024 but the incident is frustrating and annoying for trainers, jockeys and connections.
“We [jockeys] are put in a tough position when something like this happens because we all want the meeting to go ahead too,” Cameron told the Herald.
“I thought about that before going to the stewards, but in the end, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say something and then a horse or jockey were injured in those remaining two races.”
Cameron says he feels for the Auckland Thoroughbred Racing team after Ellerslie also had a partial abandonment 12 days ago, because he is a believer in the new StrathAyr surface.
“It will be brilliant and the best track in the country once it is given time, but at the moment, it feels too new,” says Cameron.
“I’m not blaming anybody and I don’t think they are doing anything wrong. It just feels like we rushed to get back to it and it needs six or eight months to grow and settle.”
Ellerslie will get that significant break soon, as it only has one more meeting scheduled for the season, on May 25.
Cameron’s comments are echoed by Craig Grylls, who rode the winner Moonlight Magic in the race where Lanikai slipped after coming wider on the home turn, which would usually put more strain on a horse’s footing, increasing its chances of slipping.
“I feel for them [the club] because the track had raced great all day and nobody had mentioned having any issues,” says Grylls.
“Then that slip happened and they lose a major race.”
Grylls says the track on Saturday didn’t allow horses to get their hooves into it as much as when he gave it his tick of approval after trials there last Monday.
That raises the question of whether the track was prepped the same for race day as it was for those trials, or whether the heavy rainfall on Saturday contributed to the slip.
“The negativity about the track right now is unjust because it is going to be great but I can also understand how this happening twice in two weeks annoys people,” Grylls said.
The frustration is amplified because Ellerslie’s relaunch is seen as the embodiment of a lucrative new era in New Zealand thoroughbred racing and rarely has the industry been so united in wanting something to work as much as they do the new Ellerslie.
After the last two weeks it would have been easy for ATR to transfer the last remaining Ellerslie meeting of the season to Pukekohe but ATR chief executive Paul Wilcox says that isn’t their plan.
“It has been a tough 24 hours and we are feeling it but we still believe in the track,” says Wilcox.
“So we will aim for that May 25 meeting to be there so we can keeping working on it and learning how best to prepare it.
“But of course we will have to go through the return to racing protocols again and we will keep people informed on how they go.”