Driver caught breaching ban

A champion harness racing driver has been caught working with horses despite a two-year ban.

Matt Anderson, an ex-New Zealand representative and national premiership-winning driver, was disqualified from working with harness horses in August last year, after convictions for assaulting and choking a woman.

Racing Integrity Unit staff found Anderson, 28, helping to train horses at a training base in Rangiora run by veteran trainer Phil Burrows on Tuesday.

When approached yesterday, Burrows said he had nothing to say. Anderson did not answer a telephone call and did not respond to a text message.

During his judge-alone trial, Anderson denied the assault and choking offences. He was sentenced in November to three months of community detention and 12 months of intensive supervision.

His criminal convictions meant that under Harness Racing NZ rules, he was automatically disqualified for two years. The disqualification extends to training, assisting or being involved in any capacity in the training of any horse without an exemption. The ban would have finished in August next year.

Anderson, with help from trainer Peter Jones and horse owner and former Harness Racing New Zealand (HRNZ) board chair Ken Spicer, last year approached HRNZ to see if there was a way for him to get an exemption to be a trainer. Jones, whose stepdaughter is Anderson’s partner, publicly stated he believed racing needed a better mechanism for getting people like Anderson back into the sport.

HRNZ chief executive Garry Woodham said he needed more information before he could comment.