New Zealand’s wild winter weather has again imposed itself on the thoroughbred industry.
Off the back of the abandonment of last Saturday’s Wellington meeting, today’s fixture at Te Aroha was ruled out after overnight wind damage to the main grandstand.
Even though the track was safe to race on, the state of the grandstand was such that the venue could not operate in a safe manner, but with work to be carried out this weekend the meeting is now rescheduled for Monday.
There will be no change to the originally released Te Aroha fields and scratchings will be re-instated. New race times can be viewed at www.nzracing.co.nz
The Opunake Cup fixture at New Plymouth on Saturday will now be held on Sunday, while heavy flooding has resulted in the Oamaru meeting on Sunday being postponed until Wednesday.
“We had to make an early decision and let everyone know about our meeting,” Taranaki Racing Inc Chief Executive Officer Carey Hobbs said.
“We’ve had 300mls of rain this month, 70 this week and 20 overnight. It’s still raining on and off so we’ve got surface water and there is heavy rain forecast again tonight.
“We are mindful that it is a very important race day and we were less than 50-50 to race on
Saturday. We made the early call and we believe there is a 95-100 per cent chance we can race on Sunday.”
There will be no change to the original fields and all scratchings will be re-instated. New times can be seen at www.nzracing.co.nz - NZ Racing Desk.