El Vencedor and Mr Brightside's performances show how far NZ and Aus racing is behind Hong Kong and Japan, and to some extent, Europe. Anything past 1200m and they just can't compete, and I would fancy Ka Ying Rising to put a hole in The Everest field.

Since it could be a great night for Kiwi-bred, here's a quick quiz question: From a pedigree perspective, what do Ka Ying Rising, Mr Brightside and El Vencedor all have in common?  

They don't seem to get involved in anything. You get the impression they don't feel they have anything worthwhile to contribute. I saw Kelvin Tyler quoted a couple of weeks ago complaining about the lack of racing opportunities down south and the numbers of horses getting balloted and eliminated every time there is a meeting down there. The owners and trainers should be all over things like that, but as far as we know they remain silent. I certainly don't recall a single thing being introduced or implemented because the owners and trainers have suggested something.

John Jenkins on Facebook asked a good question……..Where are the NZ Owners and Trainers Association in all of this?

Absolutely no is my thoughts. It's a fantastic trials track, used month in and month out, as is Levin.  Both as they are, have become the saviour of the CD and part of the Waikato, given the high number of trialist from that region, these days. 

It did not look good at the time, thanks for posting this Pete and as you say good to know she is OK, she must have been really stuck to sedate her.

Thank you so much for your lifesaving gift of $560.00. The thousands of people who call Hato Hone St John every day in need of urgent medical attention don't know how to thank you, but I'm sure they're as grateful as we are for your kind support. Your gift ensures we have ambulances, equipment and people ready to answer calls for help, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. An extraordinary gift for your community - thank you. Of course, your gift doesn't only support your Emergency Ambulance Service. You are also supporting the many vital community health services Hato Hone St John provides - including the Waka Ora Health Shuttle service and our Youth programmes. We can’t provide these important community services without you. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to visit www.stjohn.org.nz or call 0800 ST JOHN (0800 785 646). We'd love to hear from you. Thank you once again.  Yours sincerely,      Leanne Tiscornia General Manager, Fundraising Hato Hone St John 

If it is Levin do you think the money might be spent at Foxton to develop a bigger training center , trials , jump outs , or possibly return the track to racing ??. 

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this. Thankfully horse and jockey ok. Race 7 KEVIN MYERS STABLES 1200m The start of this race was delayed approximately 57 minutes due to CHARMROSE becoming cast in its barrier. To enable CHARMROSE to be safely removed from the barrier, the mare was sedated, creating a further delay as race day personnel were required to wait until the horse was able to stand.  CHARMROSE (A Lawson-Carroll) - Late scratching at 3.38pm after becoming cast in its barrier.  Underwent a veterinary examination, which did not reveal any significant injury.  A Lawson-Carroll was examined by on-course St John personnel and cleared to ride.  Connections of CHARMROSE were advised the mare must barrier trial to the satisfaction of Stewards prior to racing next. 

Former Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey wanted and still as recently as a couple of months ago openly said he wants Avondale Racecourse gone and taken over with housing for migrants  - yes that was his words. 

Messara Report? Information about him is in PPNZ. He was a Stockman.   Why was he to Go to Man to write a Report? Perhaps it needs to be reviewed?

Avondale doesn't seem to be fighting this, they must want their cut  Quote  April 14, 2024  The Avondale Jockey Club has submitted to Auckland Council to see Avondale Racecourse rezoned for housing.

I still dont get why they dont use Stratford New Plymouth is a lease and sorry but its not fit for purpose and the public stand has now gone, it will be gone in a few years .

With the closure of Racecourses in so many of our rural communities across New Zealand and closing Training Tracks in the suburbs of what has become the city of Auckland, those locals who would previously have taken an interest in having a career within racing have been shut out of opportunities. Think about how a younger local teenager could afford to up sticks and pay their own way in another part of the country where they can actually afford to live. New Zealand needs to go back to a balance of scales and look how it's cut off younger people and others trying to get jobs here. At the moment it's become lopsided and out of proportion.   Our comments were in no way intended as been Anti Migrants because we are fully aware of how it's become lopsided, and it should be acknowledged that Europeans have all been lumped together as one nationality when there's many different nationalities to add to the mix.   At the end of the day we would like to see local children welcomed into a career in the industry as they too are a part of our communities.      

Just look at section 34,. I could be wrong but i suggest that it has been served on 2 clubs, Levin and Stratford. As for Avondale, if they want a fight then Winstons legislation will be tested in court and thus the precedent for other clubs' cases should they wish to pursue legal remedies

Good article and speaks to the heart of the matter.   Repeated abandonments damage racing as NZTR deflects blame by Brian de Lore Published 27 April 2025 The continuing theme of racing abandonments due to unsafe tracks is causing immeasurable harm to a racing industry that doesn’t seem able to get its act together. Accountability seems to be a major problem. You can’t blame the jockeys if a track is unsafe, and you can’t blame the stipendiary stewards who are bound by the Health and Safety Act. That only leaves the track managers and the protocols for the preparation of tracks that come from NZTR. Imagine that you’re an Auckland owner with a horse trained in Matamata that was supposed to trial at Taupo on March 25th. You drive to Taupo to watch it, but after two trials, they are abandoned, and you’ve made the trip for nothing. The same horse is an acceptor for Awapuni last Friday, so you drive to Palmerston North, stay in a hotel the night before, and expect to go racing the next day. The races are off after race one, leaving the owner angry, deflated and out of pocket. Don’t imagine it; it’s a true story. That owner is now inclined to give up ownership due to his rising blood pressure and depleted bank account. Awapuni last Friday adds another statistic to the countless number of abandonments we have seen over the past few years. When there is torrential rain and surface water, we all know that abandonment is inevitable, but here we are talking about avoidable abandonments after the meeting has started. How much is it costing owners? How much has it cost the owners who pay for everything on raceday? How much has it cost the TAB/Entain partnership in loss of betting revenue, and Entain in particular, because they pay the cost of running the TAB and guarantee the increased stake levels? Little wonder there has been a strained relationship between NZTR and Entain.   The buck must stop with NZTR, but you wouldn’t think so reading the statement made by the new NZTR CEO, Matt Ballesty, following Friday’s Awapuni abandonment after race one. He said, “I trust that, while understandably frustrated, all participants will continue to show respect towards the track staff and club management. A significant amount of effort, resources, and consultation from track management, consultants, and officials has gone into preparing the track for racing, and the recent setback was entirely unforeseen.” RACE Awapuni General Manager Brad Taylor expressed his disappointment but was eager to review processes to prepare for future racedays. “We will examine the process leading into today and learn from it and hopefully resolve this issue to be back racing here in three weeks,” he concluded. Unforeseen track problem claim disputed New CEO Matt Ballesty’s claim that the problem was ‘unforeseen’ is disputed by several observers close to the action. He should also cut out this rubbish about being nice to the track staff because that only suggests they are to blame. NZTR is hiding behind the track staff. By saying that, he is deflecting accountability from himself as the boss of the organisation that put the structures in place. Okay, he’s been in the job only a short time A reliable source of information has told The Optimist that two Regional Track Managers in succession wouldn’t sign off Awapuni as ‘ready for use’ (one very recently), and that’s when NZTR involved two Australians, Liam O’Keeffe and Callum Brown, to advise as consultants. NZTR wanted to get racing again at Awapuni and were too impatient, according to my informant. The rail at Awapuni was positioned six metres out because rocks had appeared coming through the surface during verti-draining at one small area of the track near the 600-metre mark, about three metres out. The accusation is that they took the cheaper option to fix the problem. The horse that slipped on raceday was the widest runner, possibly another six metres out from the false rail on ground that had not been galloped on. All this after 18 months of remediation of the entire course – the last Awapuni meeting took place in September 2023; it’s a ridiculous outcome, but consistent with the Hastings debacle. My informant says that Hastings could be in use now if they simply kept the rail in its true position. Darin Balcombe and Bruce Sharrock made a hasty, ill-conceived decision to sideline Hastings. Former jockey and now trainer David Walsh testing the going at Riccarton After the Taupo trials abandonment, which had followed the Tauherenikau abandonment, NZTR released a statement saying they took some responsibility but mostly blamed the track staff. It said: “NZTR Chief Operating Officer Darin Balcombe said, ‘New Racecourse Managers are difficult to find, and we must provide them with stronger induction, training, and support systems.’  “ ‘Preparing track surfaces for racing is a specialised skill that comes only with experience, support and proper training,’ he said.  “NZTR accepts that earlier involvement may have avoided the Taupō outcome. Work is already underway to strengthen support, oversight and accountability across the tracks and infrastructure network.” Abandonments keep mounting up Perhaps Darin Balcombe needs to refresh his own memory and count up the number of abandonments racing has had under his watch. NZTR has some parallels with a book I’m currently reading; it could even be the NZTR anthem. It’s entitled MISTAKES WERE MADE (but not by me), which the Wall Street Journal reviewed by saying “Illuminating when you recognize yourself in the stories it tells – mortifying.” The New Zealand Racehorse Owners’ Association President, Bernard Hickey, has written to NZTR claiming the problems at Awapuni were known well before the race date, and the meeting should have been transferred to Otaki. His letter also said, in part,” …evidence from my point of view is that RACE, RIU and NZTR were culpable in terms of the provision of the Health & Safety Act in not showing due diligence in its decision-making process. No doubt the Club’s Risk Register was updated when the hazards were identified during the week that led to the rail being pushed out, which is a risk in itself at Awapuni, but I doubt such documentation even exists.” The Trainers’ Association does nothing. It is a toothless, benign organisation that is seemingly frightened that its members won’t get their licences renewed each season if they say anything. In the first week of December 2021, NZTR put out a statement to the stakeholders entitled, “Actions following Trentham Abandonment 4 December 2021.” Here is the second half of it, outlining the ‘actions’ they would take. While reading it, think about how much of this gets done and the multitude of abandonments we’ve had since it was written: What NZTR said in 2021…  Actions “The NZTR Board has considered a report and recommendations from NZTR Management. One of the major issues identified in the report was the lack of a clear shared understanding between NZTR, the RIB and Clubs about each organisation’s respective responsibilities and accountabilities to prepare a track surface, and the consequences for those entities where non-compliance is identified. “This is no longer acceptable and the NZTR Board has agreed to a suite of changes to the track preparation and management process so that it is clear what the obligations are and who is responsible for them. “The agreed actions going forward are: • NZTR to review and update the Track Preparation Policy and Abandonment protocols by the end of January 2022; • NZTR to determine, in consultation with Clubs, an investment plan for track equipment and resources for the next three years by the end of March 2022; • NZTR and NZSTI, in consultation with Clubs, fast track the implementation of and compliance with mytrackmanager.nz – an online portal for all clubs to regularly monitor track performance, build data comparisons, provide training tools and real time access to track maintenance planning by the end of June 2022; • NZTR to implement a more robust compliance program for Clubs that do not adhere to track preparation procedures and annual maintenance plans, including consequences for non-compliance with policies and procedures, by February 2022; • NZTR to investigate and arrange a whole-of-industry weather service, with decisions made by March 2022; • NZTR, in consultation with Clubs and RIB, to set a communication process to enhance the sharing of track surface information to all participants by the end of February 2022; • NZTR, in consultation with clubs, to set a plan to ensure that track renovations are aligned with the annual race date allocation process by the end of February 2022; • NZTR, in consultation with RIB and Clubs, to determine a process to manage queries/concerns from participants before and after each race meeting by the end of January 2022; and • NZTR to implement a reporting and action framework for clubs to notify track performance issues during race meetings by the end of January 2022. “ Footnote: Will the situation improve in the future? – doubtful. Will more NZTR-Stakeholders meetings be held to fix the problem? – bound to be, just as they have done in the past. It’s called Groundhog Day. No one will get sacked, and NZTR still appears to be accountable to no one. It’s simply a further reminder of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

What date was the legislation brought in by Winston Peters in 2020 to give better chronological order and context , factoring into account that it was State of Emergency COV*D 19 era and regulations? @tripple alliance ?

You've gotta go back to February to find something to comment on? You poor pathetic old bastard 🤣

http://www.theoptimist.co.nz/  

Great to see Jamie getting a few winners these past few weeks, but geez the stress looks like its taking a toll on him...I wish him well for the rest of the season...I for one hope he smashes it there.