Flood-hit trainer hopes for Cup win
Horse trainer Ellis Winsloe has spent more time repairing flood-damaged fences than working horses this week.
Most of his 81-hectare property at Knapdale, near Gore, was flooded last week, but luckily his home and stables were spared.
He has three horses racing at today’s Invercargill Gold Cup meeting and hopes the training he’s managed to give them will be enough for good results.
His farm backs onto the Mataura River. As the river started to rise and look concerning last week, Winsloe arranged for his wife, Lynne, who is a tetraplegic, to stay with a neighbour on higher land.
‘‘It [flooding] surrounded us,’’ Winsloe said.
His horses were kept in the stable for three days and were only allowed out for two training gallops at the Gore racecourse.
Winsloe said it could take him a couple of months to get his fences back to normal. ‘‘A lot of stuff built up and pushed them over.’’
The horseman said it was the fifth flood to go through his farm but the latest was not as bad as the one in 1978.
Southland’s representative on the New Zealand Fencing Contractors Association, Stephen Mee, of Winton, said contractors from outside the province could be brought in to help with the widespread repair work.
He thought there would be sufficient wire available in the province.
‘‘Taking the stuff [debris] off the fences is the worst part . . . Sometimes it’s easier to cut the wires.’’
Riverton fencer Chris Anderson agreed. Anderson and his three fulltime and one part-time staff members have repair work to do on farms at Wreys Bush, Balfour, Northhope and Lumsden.
A priority was to restore electric fencing so that stock could be controlled, Anderson said.
‘‘Without power on, the cows can push through them [fences].’’
Meanwhile, total prizemoney of $300,000 at the Southland Racing Club’s Cup meeting in Invercargill on Saturday is the most a racing club in the province has put up in one day.
The cup race carries a stake of $50,000, while the Southland Guineas is the Southland’s richest horse race at $70,000.
Southland Racing Club president Sean Bellew said: ‘‘We’ve been a good, profitable club and we want to give the profit back to the people [racehorse owners]. We’re not bankers . . . You make it, you spend it.’’
There will be three consecutive days of horse racing in Southland.
Scheduled are the Cup meeting today, the Winton Harness Racing Club meeting tomorrow and another day of thoroughbred racing at Ascot Park on Monday.