After a dazzling inaugural running of New Zealand’s first slot race the host club is eyeing adding another next season, this time for trotters.
And the Waikato-Bay Of Plenty Harness Racing Club has the overwhelming support of trainers as it contemplates what could quickly become one of the most highly anticipated harness racing meetings of the year.
Thursday’s first running of The Race by Grins for NZ$900,000 was a huge success judged by any metric, with a good crowd, massive media coverage on both sides of the Tasman and a field that lived up to the stake, with four Australian horses attending.
At least two of those, runner-up Majestic Cruiser and Mach Dan, will stay for the Group 1s at Alexandra Park starting this Friday, so there is already guaranteed flow-on effect and the meeting left harness racing participants buzzing.
“It was so good to see young people there enjoying harness racing and lining the fence,” said champion horseman Mark Purdon.
Turnover on the eight races, many of them lower grade, topped $1 million domestically, with Australian investment certain to further boost that way above a normal Thursday night meeting.
But the actual support programme was thrown together after The Race itself was confirmed, with nobody really knowing how successful the meeting could be.
Next year The Race will retain the same date, April 14, but move to a Friday night and club chief executive David Branch will have far more time to programme a support card to give the meeting more of a Karaka Million feel of short but select.
“We want to make The Race worth $1 million next year and I think we owe that to our slot holders, so that will be the first target,” says Branch.
“But we are also already thinking about a second slot race for the trotters. There are a lot of really passionate trotting owners and we think that is the natural next step.”
A trotting slot race of even $300,000 or $350,000 total stake with a slot cost of as little as $20,000 would instantly propel The Race meeting to being one of the biggest deals in Australasian harness racing and Branch has admitted his club could also look at moving races like the Waikato Guineas to bolster the undercard.
With guaranteed returns for slot holders as well as slots having tax advantages as marketing expenses for racing businesses, slots in a trotting race would not be hard to sell.
Any new trotting race worth $300,000 or more might require the Group 1 NZ Trotting Champs at Addington to be moved a week earlier to provide a two-week turnaround between the two, but after radical changes to the harness racing calendar in the last six months almost nothing outside NZ Cup week in Christchurch is set in stone.
With the Australian open class trotting calendar slowing down at this time of the year and several very high-profile Australian trotting owners with massive investment in the gait, it would be very surprising if a trotting slot race didn’t instantly draw support from across the Tasman.
Their best trotters would also be able to come to Cambridge and stay through until the Rowe Cup in late May.
Add to that a vintage local trotting crop, which could see any new slot race headlined by Sundees Son, Bolt For Brilliance and Muscle Mountain with support from Midnight Dash, Five Wise Men, Cracker Hill and Australia’s best trotter in Majestuoso, and the concept could even rival The Race for sheer class.
"I think a trotting slot race is the obvious next step for the night and I am sure it would get great support,” said Purdon, who has little to gain from the addition as he has no open class trotting star and none in the pipeline.
Any major movements and changes to the Group race schedule have to be approved by Harness Racing New Zealand but with the industry now having a new meeting that has captured the imagination of the public everything possible should be done to cash in on it.
New Zealand’s greatest ever harness driver Tony Herlihy thought he was going to Alexandra Park this Friday without an open class drive yet has ended up on the best pacer in the country.
Herlihy didn’t enter his stable star Bolt For Brilliance for the open mile trot at Alexandra Park’s huge meeting on Friday as he will keep him fresh for the National Trot next week and the major trotting races ahead next month, culminating in the Rowe Cup.
Remarkably, given Herlihy is our most successful ever domestic driver or jockey, he has been without a serious open class pacing drive for much of the season so was facing watching both of Friday’s elite races from the drivers' room.
Instead he finds himself in the hot seat behind last start The Race winner Self Assured in the NZ$100,000 Dawson Harford Taylor Mile, with the favourite facing the outside of the front line as he did when winning the $900,000 slot race at Cambridge last Thursday.
The Taylor Mile has clearly benefitted from The Race, with Australian pacers Mach Dan (9) and last Thursday’s runner-up Majestic Cruiser (10) sticking around for it, while it has also attracted Spankem, South Coast Arden and Krug, the next three home in The Race.
Add to that 2018 Taylor Mile winner A Gs White Socks and Cranbourne and the Mile shapes as one of the strongest pacing races in New Zealand in recent seasons, albeit missing the still recovering from injury Copy That.
Herlihy gets the Self Assured drive after co-trainer and regular driver Mark Purdon was suspended for his whip action in the closing stages for The Race.
Purdon originally offered the drive to Maurice McKendry, because he has driven Self Assured to win before, but McKendry opted to stick with his regular open class partner Hot And Treacherous so Purdon turned to Herlihy, his brother-in-law.
Herlihy will need all of his tactical genius come Friday as not only has Self Assured drawn the outside of the front line but many of the big names who drew inside him last week are there again on Friday.
While last Thursday he had time to settle and come sit parked, it is highly doubtful the 1609m at this level will allow Self Assured to do that again.
That could even swing the market toward his stablemate, Spankem, who should be a big improver from The Race and has the gate speed to use barrier 4 in the Taylor Mile, a race he won in 2019 when restricted to its traditional four-year-olds but has now been opened to pacers of all ages.
While Bolt For Brilliance will be missing from the open mile trot, which features the next round of Muscle Mountain versus Sundees Son, Herlihy will bring last season’s Jewels juvenile trot winner Double Delight back to the races for the first time this year.
The opinions expressed in The Forum are those of the author and may not be attributed to or represent policies of Harness Racing Victoria, which is the state authority and owner of thetrots.com.au.