Nelli

Any good driver can tell what the horse has left in the tank. I know a number of times I've gone down to the stables after one of our horses has won by a head and the driver has said he "always had him covered" while I'd been holding my breath down the entire straight. The drivers are in a far better position to tell if their horses chances were affected than someone watching from the stand or tv.

Great to have racing back on free to air (can watch on both our tvs now) and seem to see more of the race aftermath (happy owners etc) in harness races. However, we find some of the text too small to read on our tvs and there is no time (we record races when we're out so now harder to fast forward past the dogs to find the races of interest). However, I assume we can give Entain feedback through their contact link on their website, and if enough of us do it, they may do some fine tuning.

It was also totally predictable that no North Island trotters are nominated for the Racing Rewards races this Friday at Addington even though a NI horse was the leading point earner and many have the points to be in the fields (haven't checked the pacers). Why would any owner of these lower rated horses fork out the money and put their horses through the stress and risks of the long distance trip/ferry crossings? It's different for top horses racing for big money and Group Race glory (they earn enough to fly) but IMO both this series and the Country Cup series should have North and South Island divisions

Only 3 noms for the Trotters' Flying Mile at Cambridge. It's almost as if the current programming is designed to accelerate the decline of interesting harness racing in the North. What South Island trainer would enter this even if bringing horses up to race in the slot race or be staying on for the Northern "carnival". Few horses could race in a Group race on Saturday, take the long trip North, and be ready to race at the top level the next Thursday! It's bad enough the rating system encourages the export of most of our potentially "open class" horses and the proliferation of R35-R40 fields.

The drop in numbers of open class trotters is just symptomatic of current conditions. We've always had the superior champs (e g., Lyell Creek, Monbet, Marcoola) and they are aspirational to all of us in the industry. But with dropping owner (=horse) numbers combined with the harshness of the rating system on any good performer, in the last decade many of our potential open class trotters either went quickly to the broodmare paddock after earning black type as juveniles, or have been exported.

The article says the company bought the land from ATC 3 years ago and it seems the club is not part of the project. I assume the sale of so much land was to reduce debt and the museum was demolished to replace the lost parking. Members in the know should be able to confirm this.

Totally agree. At present it seems everything is stacked against Auckland. Their own poor decisions turned what should have been a gold mine into a sink hole. However, the North is just the barometer for the ill winds besetting our industry nationwide. IMO decisions made by HRNZ have accelerated the North's decline (e.g., scrapping the northern summer carnival and the Jewels). If we want our industry to survive, we need city folk to experience the good things about racing. Turning our back on our biggest city leaves ourselves wide open to the anti brigades. We need new ways to attract Aucklanders into the racing game.

One of the side effects of these conditions is that commercial breeder companies (including those sending mares to their own stallions) don't face the same problems. Eg Ultimate Racy Girl has earned over $7K for Alabar.

Aha - in the small print in v3 of the conditions is the reason the principle breeder misses out. As the mare is a 5yo, it is likely that the breeding entity (the group of people listed) for Baltimore Jill hasn't bred anything within the last 5 years. Yes it does seem unfair that the very people that go to the effort to get additional people into owning and breeding Standardbreds are excluded from both schemes.

Baltimore Jill has not placed in a f&m race (f&m) bonus nor won a race this season (NZ stallion bonus).

We've not qualified for any bonuses yet. Having different "breeding entities" eliminated us from the old scheme (we get partners in to race and that detail came into play too late for us to change ownerships) and we race trotters which effectively eliminates us from the new scheme in the North Island. The NZ bred bonus only goes to winners (I cannot see what at all use it is to give a sizable bonus to a breeder for a decision they made 3-8 years ago).

It still comes down to having enough owners. The costs are the same to feed and train a good or poor horse but the latter will earn less. If other owner/breeders are like us, we focus our resources on the ones who can pay their way (and for the education of our young ones) and find new homes for those who are a big drain on our resources. Will low grade races change the numbers of horses we can afford to race? If it means funds shifted away from the higher grade races and our good horses will earn less, then the proposal may actually have a negative effect on how many horses we can afford to own.

Back in the 1960s people were worried about the dominance of Adios! Breeders always try to breed to the best to the best and the marked improvements in times, conformation and gait that I've seen myself since I started going to the trots seem to confirm the benefits have outweighed the negatives to date. And now we have access to frozen semen which for the trotters has opened up a heap more in terms of out crosses/genetic diversity. Also, I've just checked out our copy of the 1998/1999 Sires Register and there was only 1 more registered stallion than in 2023/24. So as a breeder, stallion choice is not a worry to me. I worry more about where the new owners are going to come from to make it worth breeding in the first place.

I assume Hi Ho means clubs that are managed by paid staff. If you look up the Cambridge Raceway website you'll see under Contacts they have a team of 8 listed (and their various job titles). I think the only job any volunteers do there is the hospitality for winning owners.

Yes Ohokaman, picnic meetings in the North should have been regarded a must, not a nice-to-have. Pirongia on Boxing Day and Tauranga on Anniversary weekend used to be major crowd pullers year after year. Both canned for different reasons. Having lost all the associated sponsors and community memory they would be hard but not impossible to reboot if there was a group of enthusiasts at Cambridge willing to do so.

Instead of all this negative talk, I'd like to hear of what transformational change could be made to turn northern harness racing around. Only a few days ago I rewatched a race of one of our horses on 31 Dec 2021. What struck me were the crowds and families present, as they had also been at Cambridge on the 24th. IMO we need to reinstate the family-friendly summer Northern carnival and picnic meetings to attract new people to our sport. Half of NZ's population live Hamilton north. We only need to draw in a small % of them to make a massive difference.

Agree $3k would incentivise me too but the main horses likely to earn that much are the black type pacers that will be bred from anyhow. The majority of other recipients to date are from maiden pacing f&m races and you can only win one of those. The nice mares in the middle that race successfully in mixed sex fields, the very mares we would want to be our future broodmares, are mostly missing out. Unless there is a nationwide shift by clubs to program more races for the "middle" mares (difficult unless do hcp stands) or the criteria are changed to include all winners ($$ would have to change), the scheme will mainly make the rich, richer.

The big problems with the new f&m bonus scheme are: 1) by restricting the f&m bonus to f&m races, trotting mares and those competing successfully against the boys week after week are largely excluded and the biggest beneficiaries are the black type fillies winning the heats and finals of the age Group races; 2) there is a big regional bias as southern clubs are more proactive; 3) as only paid out when the mare goes to stud, the bonuses earned by a current filly mightn't be able to claimed for another 5+ years if she continues racing till a 7yo. This won't help our current crisis. As for paying breeders $1000s retrospectively for their decision to go to an NZ stallion years ago, the less said the better. IMO, a simpler approach would be to give every mare served by a registered stallion a $500 service subsidy. It would have immediate impact for the next breeding season. There would be less paperwork, a mare could get it yearly, and it would proportionally benefit most the breeders going to cheaper stallions (many of these are NZ bred). A plus for HRNZ would be that there would be no liabilities stretching out into the future and it would be simple to increase if seen imperative to incentivise breeders even further.

Relooked at the data in the article link. I was adding up the stallion services (did make a couple of errors) whereas if you look at mares served there was a 10.3% decline. Some mares are served multiple times which accounts for the services being greater number

Just had a look at 23/24 breeding stats and it makes dire reading. 1296 pacing mares served down from 1486 the previous year (12.8% decrease). 493 trotting mares served down from 597 in 22/23 (17.4% decrease). And these figures are just mares served, not foals on the ground.

We need more owners! As an owner/breeder myself, I often look at the collection of fellow owners gathered before a race and most are 65+. Our numbers are dwindling and are not being replaced by sufficient younger people. Fewer potential owners = lower returns for those trying to sell nice mid-range yearlings. Good on trainers and studs that put together well-run syndicates /partnerships as that is a great way to introduce new owners to the game. A big plus for breeding trotters is that fillies are just as (or even more) competitive as colts when racing as juveniles, and a well performed trotting mare usually does well in the broodmare paddock (her genes may be more important than the stallion). However, as Victoria is the only Aussie state big on trotters and historically in NZ trotters have raced for less money than pacers, it is not very profitable to breed trotting yearlings for the sales as on average, trotters sell for less than pacers. Therefore most trotters are bred to be raced by their breeders and that may help keep stallion diversity and foal numbers up.

Don't place all the blame on the ATC. This latest fiasco is down to poor programming. The underlying problem is that we have fewer and fewer owners and less horses being bred. It's not just a North Island issue - the number of qualifiers in the South Island compared to previous years makes sad reading. ATC is just the "canary in the mine" for our whole industry.

If the Country Cup dates were happened to be fixed because of some higher level programming, Auckland could have at least programmed a R35+ race. At present all those lower grade trotters have no alternative other than nominate for the Cup qualifier.

Whoever thought it a good idea to put on trotting and pacing Country Cup meetings at Cambridge when the meeting is back to back with Auckland? If these two clubs were working together for the best of the industry, this is the week Cambridge should be running a 'minor' meeting.

Tactical Landing was a top juvenile US racehorse, as was both his sire and dam. While just a young stallion, his progeny are already doing great things in the States. In regard to the family of lot 51, the dam is a half sister to 3 horses that were top juveniles. So the genetics are there and judging by the price, the stable believes the yearling has the right conformation and gait. I myself would prefer the dam to have several wins to her name (in Sire Stakes finals almost every competitor is out of a good race mare) but the dam sire is a top stallion.