Investigation under way after abandonment at Ellerslie
An investigation is set to start this morning into the abandonment of Ellerslie’s meeting yesterday as a result of safety concerns following a slip on the venue’s newly-installed StrathAyr track.
A decision was made to abandon the mid-week meeting following senior jockey Opie Bosson’s report of his horse, The Storyteller, slipping near the crossing following race three, which the Stephen Marshtrained gelding won.
Stipendiary steward Lauren Selvakumaran said the idea of moving the rail was floated, but it was decided that wasn’t feasible given the time it would take.
“The rail was out 10m today which was the first time the rail has been at that position, so that may have played a part,” she said. “It was suggested a possible rail move, but we just don’t have the time for that as it would take five-plus hours, so we would run out of daylight.”
Auckland Thoroughbred Racing chief executive Paul Wilcox was disappointed in the outcome and said the club was working hard to rectify the issue.
There were initial reports of horses slipping on Karaka Millions night in January, just the second meeting on the new surface. However, there have been no reports of such issues in subsequent meetings at the venue until yesterday.
“From what we can ascertain, it is the same issue where the grass is matted and joins the sand profile, which is causing the slipperiness. We thought we had that under control and we obviously didn’t,” Wilcox said.
“All of those races subsequent to Karaka Millions night have been run without issue and all the jockeys have been happy with the surface. Today with the rail out 10m, which is ground that hasn’t been raced on, it has caused the same issue we experienced on Karaka Millions night.”
The track is set to undergo further renovation over winter. However, Wilcox said the club will meet with NZTR and StrathAyr representatives this morning to discuss the issue and work out a plan to try to rectify the
issue ahead of their next meeting in 10 days.
“After the last race meeting here [this season], which is May 25, it [StrathAyr track] will get a heavy renovation and that will be focusing on removing that matting to ensure
that can’t cause any issues. This time next year, it will be settled and hopefully racing perfectly,” Wilcox said.
“We have had a discussion with NZTR and we have got another meeting with them in the morning to work out a plan of attack so that we can have the confidence of our jockeys, owners, trainers and punters in our surface.”
NZTR chief operating officer Darin Balcombe felt for the participants affected by the abandonment and said the three parties will be working hard today to identify a remedy.
“We had a quick catch-up late this afternoon on the abandonment. We are going to meet again tomorrow morning and we have got StrathAyr coming over from Australia,” Balcombe said.
“We are going to have a look at what we can do going forward into next week and whether it is still viable to run that meeting next Saturday.
“We have to do better. We can’t have these issues coming up and we have to get these fixes and make sure the tracks are improving.
“I am pretty gutted for the owners who had to go home without a race.
“We will work through the issues and come up with a plan going forward and we will get that out to the industry at some stage tomorrow.”