Racing: Te Aroha hit by setback to track

Te Kahu winning the Great Northern Steeplechase at Te Aroha in 2021. Race Images

Racing bosses aren’t pushing the panic button over New Zealand’s biggest jumping meeting as the new home of the Great Northerns struggles to return to racing.

Te Aroha will be the new home of the Great Northern Steeples and Hurdles after the sale and closure of the famed Ellerslie hill.

But after being out of action for 18 months for a track refurbishment, Te Aroha suffered another setback last week when their first trial meeting scheduled for the new surface was called off hours before it was due to start.

Officials galloped 12 horses on the new surface before the trials and those who galloped against or near the inside rail negotiated it with no issues.

However, a horse who was moved further out to test wider footing slipped. That not only saw the trials abandoned but the relaunch race meeting set for next month has been moved to Hastings.

New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing chief operating officer Darin Balcombe is hoping the latest issue can be quickly resolved.

“We are still investigating the exact problem but it appears to be only one part of the track,” says Balcombe.

“So we hope to fix that, and there are two meetings scheduled there for July which we would like to hold and then work towards the Great Northerns.”

Balcombe says NZTR sees Te Aroha as a venue that could hold around 10 meetings a year and become one of the homes of jumps racing in the north.

Although Te Aroha has suffered another setback, Balcombe was satisfied with the launch of the Awapuni synthetic track on Sunday, the last of three synthetic tracks built around the country.

The meeting was dominated by inside barriers draws, with the winners coming from barriers 1, 2, 1, 1, 3 and 1, but that stat may be misleading as although the first winner led, the second winner came from near last and pulled widest on the track.

“Overall, the feedback was good and we didn’t get any complaints about the surface,” says Balcombe.

NZTR is working on protocols for using synthetic tracks for Saturday meetings under rare circumstances they would be needed, the most obvious being if the Saturday venue became waterlogged or the surrounding facilities flooded.

“We have the option to transfer a meeting from a grass track to a synthetic one, and if we have to, can even do so after acceptances,” says Balcombe. “But we are still working on those exact protocols and are very aware that on the odd occasions that has happened in Australia, some of those meetings have been decimated by scratchings.

“We are also, at this stage, committed to not running any black type races on synthetic, so if we moved a meeting from a grass track to synthetic and that meeting contained a black type race, we would remove that race from the programme and reschedule it for another time.”

A move from grass to synthetic for a meeting post-acceptances also raises questions for the TAB.

Punters who place bets on a Wednesday or Thursday for a Saturday meeting expecting it to be on grass are unlikely to be thrilled about those bets standing if the meeting is moved to a synthetic surface.

And with its No Deductions policy, the TAB won’t want to trade markets for a meeting which could see huge rafts of scratchings because of a grass to synthetic move.

The simplest solution should any meeting need to be moved after final acceptances is all early bets are refunded and betting closed, markets reset and then opened again.

While the Awapuni synthetic track is up and running, the redevelopment of the centre’s grass track is set to start in October, which means the grass surface will be out of the Central Districts rotation for at least a year.

“We are hoping it only misses one summer of racing and we plan to spread those meetings that would usually be held there around the region,” says Balcombe.

Latest from Sport

Sam Whitelock described the decision to leave as 'pretty easy' and it was easy to see why.