TARANTULA

Shane in my opinion, the industry is in serious trouble, and I don’t think the people running it have any real idea how to turn it around. Instead of tackling the underlying problems, they seem more focused on protecting their own positions than fixing what’s broken.

I don't think they would close Motukarara Charlie mate. Surely, they couldn't be that dumb? It's a popular track. I hate the place but many others love it. Of course, I guess it costs  a lot of money to maintain a big grass track like Motukarara, so that might be a factor? I think they should leave Canterbury as we are - Addington, Mot, Rangiora, Methven, Ashburton, Orari are all good tracks and usually good fields. 

The report seems to suggest the way to rejuvenate the racing industry is by selling as many tracks as possible and use the money for just carrying on as before.
I don't see how this does anything to ensure that we have a future.
Surely the answers lie in firstly reducing administration costs and sorting out a fair and workable handicapping and programming system

The Motukarara suggestion shows how ignorant and out of touch the report is and should mean nobody takes any notice of it. Just more money down the drain.

Terry May,one of Harness racing real gentleman has passed away at 75years of age.Terry has trained a lot  good horses over the years,the best maybe Palestine.Great guy who would always take the time to forward his wealth of  knowledge to anybody that asked.Also bred one of our legends of the sport in  Ricky 

I presume those figures you are quoting for ATC are from last season?
If that's the case, then you need the context of the 40% increase in races at ATC taken into account, 395 races compared to 282 the previous season, also the average field size dropped from 8.5 to 8.2.
Turnover tells you nothing, if the small fields don't produce GBR, and it's the GBR that is halved in 2 year's time. 

So sad. RIP Champ 😭😭😭

Fuck !!!
Champions don't deserve that end .

Dreadful. My guts got that sinking feeling when it happened, just looked horrible.
Commiserations to the connections who no doubt loved him as a family mamber.
Tremendous jumper with a big big heart.
 

Yes, he never got back up.

Oh that's just tragic. I figured when they didn't go back for an update that the worst had happened.
Farewell champ, you gave us so many wonderful memories.

Congrats to Luk. He's a great role model of how to live life to the fullest.

This guy certainly deserves it, amazing to be still training and driving at his age, as well as his good work in the health sector. 
Well done sir 👏👏

Couldn’t agree more.  I’ll watch a big All Blacks game but that’s as far as it goes for me.  The total overkill of endless non stories in the main stream media about Rugby is a real turn off for me.  Often these stories involve mediocre & low level players I’ve never heard of and often they are commenting on other players equally as obscure as they are. HRNZ need to do something about getting main stream media coverage for our good stories to put Harness in a positive light.  

Not there anymore Were Doomed. Yes people did think he was good but like a flash car it might be a different story when you look under the bonnet 

Confidence, that's the connection, HRNZ have thrown money at the NI and at the top end of our racing calendar, but have neglected owners & breeders who support the larger fields of the  country Clubs, the ones that encourage on course patrons and generally make a profit.
The main NI clubs, ATC, Cambridge & Manawatu had average field sizes last season of 8.2, 8.1, & 7.9, so half the field receive stake money, ATC of course have Group & Listed races that pay to 5TH.
The SI, last season had 10 clubs that had average field size of 11 or more, another 10 clubs had between 10 - 10.9, including Addington, while there are more small field races each year, including a 3 horse race this evening for $13600, there are enough 12-15 fields to keep the average up.
Because of the higher field size, particularly with grass track racing, owners and owner/breeders have a significantly lower chance of making money than NI owners, this of course influences breeding decisions.
The Stakes money going to the "Top end" can be seen in who is buying all the yearlings, with the much lower numbers at Christchurch now, it has shut out a lot of the SI smaller trainers, have not looked to see who is picking up the psd ones.
The population of the greater Auckland area is 500,000 more than the whole of the South Island, if they were at all interested in Harness Racing, Alexandra Park would be racing 4 times a week, they struggle with one, I simply can not see the point of subsidizing their racing by over $5m a year, while letting the South Island breeding and sales continue a downward spiral.

I was there & he had an enthusiastic crowd of fans cheering him on.  Mostly young people and many new owners. Ther is approximately 30 or so people involved & by the time they bring their partners it does add a bit of life to proceedings. 

A few weeks out from a big birthday combined with an email from the Forbury Park TC saying I no longer have to pay a subscription as I have been a member for fifty years has got me reminiscing about the "good old days" of harness racing (or trotting as we used to call it). I joined illegally as an 18 year old student and hardly missed a meeting for forty years..
So here are a few random memories.The first few are general and the last four are more personal so please indulge me.
1) I grew up in Southland surrounded by harness racing so was hooked at an early age.I'll always remember my best friend telling me in about 1969 that  Young Quinn was grossly overrated and would be found out when he went north....I've never let him forget it.
2) It was common for horses to start twice a day then but amazingly Hi Foyle started in consecutive races at Addington one night and was not disgraced in either.
3) I'm not sure of today's rules but a trotter called Puketapu was found to have a disqualified owner. He had won quite a few races but they were all stripped from him and under a rearranged ownership went back to maidens. 
4) Again it couldn't possibly happen now but I remember mid-70's that there was a smash with just over a lap to go at Invercargill but the race carried on. The ambulance parked on the track while they attended an injured driver. When the field came round again they all went around the ambulance except Robert Cameron who went inside and came from the rear to win the race. All hell broke loose but the result stood. Nowadays of course it would be a no-race
5) Believe it or not but for many years the Cup class horses raced at Forbury. One night commentator Lachie Marshall said that Lord Module was "hard held" as they crossed the line intimating that he may not have been trying. All hell broke loose again and he was strongly reprimanded.
6) I remember having a maiden nominated for a race which had sixty entries. It was very hard to get a start as there were far fewer meetings than today.
7) I attended a lot of meetings at no longer existing tracks...Harness at Forbury, Waimate, Waikouaiti and Greymouth and gallops at Beaumont,Tapanui,Wyndham and Orari
Now to a few punting stories:
8- I was caught by a policeman betting at Invercargill when I was sixteen. I then had to go to Children's Court along with a lot of very scary young men who were being charged with various assaults, sexual charges etc. I was embarrassed to say I was up for betting with my own money. My non-racing father was appalled at having to meet with various police and social workers. They also approached my school to talk to my teachers about why I had gone so wrong. 
The judge asked me my future plans so I told him I was going to Otago University to study Law.He then dismissed the charges and I was cheeky enough to ask if I could have the confiscated ticket back as it was a winner worth about $30. He ordered that it be handed over to me and wished me "good luck" with a wink. He then asked the prosecution why they were wasting his time.All these years later I've never faced any other charges.
9-Two years later (still underage) I got the treble on Cup Day 1975 (Lunar Chance year). It paid about $2500. To put that into context my father was earing $4500 a YEAR at the time. As I'm sure many of you will understand I was hooked for life.
10) Shortly after a friend owned a horse which had been unlucky and was working well. It was entered in a maiden race at Wyndham and we confidently expected it to pay $15-$20 and were all geared up to have a go. Those days legally there could only be nine races so if clubs had too many entries they would split a race and run it in divisions. Because that meant there were too many horses for the tote to handle each horse was paired with a runner in the other race.
Guess what...our mystery runner was bracketed with the red hot favourite in the other race and the bracket was only paying about $2.50. What made things worse was the the hot favourite failed and our horse won so what should have a $10 plus dividend was $2.50. I've never had a win that I was so unhappy about.
10) Jump forward to 1982 Cup day at Addington. I'd had a reasonably good day so took $100 worth of double tickets on Bonnie's Chance.You only took one leg then if it won you could see the approximate double dividends from the TAB pool (remember doubles were huge then).
Bonnie's Chance beat Armalight by seven lengths paying $4.65. The second leg was what we now call the Junior Free for All with a good field of C8,C9 and Open class horses but there was a quiet word out of Southland for Zabadak. The approximate dividend went up at $180 but so many of us put our tickets on it (I put $50) that when he stormed down the outside paying $21.70. to win going away the double paid $127.75 to return nearly $6400 which became the deposit on our first house.
11) Weirdly I've kept the racebook from every meeting I've attended from 1970-2000 before I was "asked" to stop.
12)  I've gambled hundreds of thousands of dollars on horses over the last fifty years. Undoubtedly overall I've lost a lot but many, many times a large lump sum has paid for an overseas holiday or car.
The only sports bets I've ever had were a regular $4 week on the TAB rugby pools but one day in 1999 I won $93,000....really weird.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear other peoples stories and memories.I'm convinced that racing is a sunrise industry which has long since had its best days and I  personally don't think it's salvageable so we were lucky to have the best of it.
 
 
 
 

ATC Sponsorship Income;
24/25     $405,341      expenses- $335,896    = $69,445
23/24     $452,248     expenses- $294,897    = $157,351
The 24/25 season had 44 race meetings, while 23/24 had only 31

I think it was back in November that the PP site published the "unaudited" Cambridge annual report, it was reported that the audited accounts would be ready mid December, I have not seen any mention of this actually happening.
I would have thought that it would be a legal responsibility to provide the audited accounts to members.

ATC as at 31/7/25;
Westpac Debt @ $82.5m, including Finance costs of $6.2m
We are now 7 months into the new year, so there will now be an additional $3.1m interest added, which will bring it up to a minimum of $85.6m.
Which is a minor problem, because the Westpac facility was amended subsequent to balance date, and now expires on the 30 July 2026, with a limit of $84.6m.
Even though ATC earned over $3m from the Gaming/TAB, and over $3m from the Rental units, they had a Bank overdraft of  $213,000 at balance date.

Really FF?,  You think CMN is the only one who cares about transparency & the financial health of the North Island harness racing clubs?.  If you’re not interested fair enough but don’t post on this thread then. The rest of us do care and will keep on discussing it when relevant information comes to hand. That’s the whole purpose of this site. 

I imagine the vast majority of thoroughbreds bred for the sales are North Island based.  For standardbreds the split is more even though probably around 60% are bred in the South Island. I don’t imagine the SBSR or Canterbury breeders would be keen to have the added expense of travelling to Karaka and you would have to question the advantage of centralising the sales there when Canterbury has the largest population of industry participants. 

I was out there & I’ve never seen so many cars in the car park.  Massive crowd. Also of note, it’s almost impossible to bet on your phone there because of reception. There were plenty of on course tote windows & they all had long queues. It was like the good old days in the 80s

It sounds like a real cowboys outfit mate? Bloody joke reading the stipes report. Part of the railing blew off due to high winds? WTF? Crossing also damaged by high winds?? Give me a break. Clearly, little maintenance done at that track. 
Yes, crossings are dangerous and should be banned. A lot of horses don't handle them and it's a wonder someone, or a horse, has not been killed at a crossing. I owned a mare and she would always jump the crossing at Motukarara. She always came down pacing but it was scary watching her because you never know... it must have been frightening stuff for driver. Unfortunately, all crossings in NZ are substandard. Improvement needed.