The South Island reinforcements have arrived just in time to save one of Alexandra Park’s biggest carnivals from being a disaster.
And the new arrivals coupled with the large numbers of South Island stars already based in the north for the autumn carnival should ensure two successful Friday nights, even if doubts remain over the timing of the Auckland Cup.
This Friday sees the Roy Purdon Memorial and Anzac Cup both being run as 2200m standing starts, and as the lead-ups to the iconic Auckland (pacing) and Rowe cups (trotting) on Friday week.
The Auckland Cup has struggled to find a consistent home for decades, bouncing from December to March, back to New Year’s Eve and now to its late May date as part of a huge restructuring of the harness racing calendar.
The Auckland Trotting Club is not happy with the late May date and club president Jamie MacKinnon says his team want to meet with Harness Racing New Zealand to try and revert back to the New Year’s Eve timeslot.
Key issues include the best horses getting tired by late May after a hectic summer and autumn, with many trainers preferring to have them spelling by now to be ready for spring racing.
And even if the best horses in the world actually did turn up at Alexandra Park for this carnival, trying to get patrons to attend any night time sporting event once the weather has turned wintery is getting increasingly difficult, especially in Auckland.
While attracting crowds is a big enough battle, it is also hard to keep the elite horses turning up for every race at the end of six months of intense racing, so both Muscle Mountain (Anzac Cup) and Copy That (Roy Purdon Memorial) will be missing this week but back for their respective Cup targets the following Friday.
With other horses also feeling the effects of a very busy April, the open class numbers have dropped to alarming levels but have thankfully been replenished by new southern raiders.
Trainers Colin and Julie De Filippi have sent Heza Sport north to contest the Roy Purdon, meaning five of the seven starters are trained in the South Island.
The Anzac Cup sees new southern arrivals in Eurokash and Matua Tana, meaning six of the 12 runners are from the South Island while Aldebaran Zeus is trained in Australia.
The disparity is even greater in the richest race of the night, the $130,000 Magness Benrow Sires’ Stakes Final, with six of the eight starters trained in Canterbury and one of them in Millwood Nike set to start $1.10.
The three-year-old trot, the Lone Star Sires’ Stakes Final, is likely to have eight South Island-trained trotters in the 13 starters, although with the Dunn stable having bases in both islands some of their reps in all the feature races could be termed part-time northerners.
That is also the case for many of the better horses racing this Friday, with pacing stars Akuta and Self Assured having been in the north for months.
But the numbers are still a stark reminder of how thin the top-class North Island-trained horses are and how the Auckland Cup - traditionally seen as the second biggest harness race in New Zealand - is starting to feel like an afterthought in late May, especially as its prizemoney has plummeted to an embarrassing NZ$180,000.
Picture: Alexandra Park on Facebook
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.