NZ HARNESS NEWS
Bordeaux will be a warm favourite to repeat in Monday’s G3 $30,000 South Bay Trotters Cup at Kaikoura, but he will have to repel a significant challenge from locals hoping for a hometown success.
Paul Nairn has set his locally-bred and owned up-and-coming pair of Ronald J and The Foot Tapper for the race and Ken Ford, who is from Kaikoura, will be hoping for an improved showing from Marcoola along with Zachary Binx.
Ford’s cousin Barry also has a leading hope in Doctor Bones engaged while Tornado Valley and Destiny Jones are also owned by ‘top of the south’ connections.
Bordeaux will be looking to step well and lead them all the way, but if he does get beaten, the winner is likely to have some sort of local flavour.
More importantly, the popular seaside fixture will mark another step towards the recovery of the Kaikoura township following the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which devastated and isolated the region just a few weeks after last year’s race meeting.
Nobody knows how difficult the recovery has been more than Barry Ford, a committeeman on the Kaikoura club who has been busy lately preparing the track for the influx of people over the weekend from far and wide.
“The racecourse came through the earthquake relatively unscathed but our home and our track both suffered significant damage,” said Ford.
“There are gouges running right through the property and it took three months to get the track workable again.
“The house had to be relevelled and fixed up and just now we’ve finally got the painters and plasterers in there.
“So we’re still fixing stuff up a year later and it’s been a long, slow process but we’re all getting there.”
Ford has also faced the extra challenge of trying to race a horse like Doctor Bones from Kaikoura since he resumed in February.
That meant taking the long inland route to Christchurch on numerous occasions and even when the main road reopened a few months ago, over the winter that was only on the weekends and the road would be closed by 6pm.
“When it did reopen there were so many road works and so much traffic that it was actually taking longer than the inland route, so there’s been a lot of challenges during the year.
“It helped when our daughter Monica bought a property in Lincoln in April as more recently that has allowed us to go down early for racing and get settled in.”
Doctor Bones, an eight-year-old grey gelding, made a comeback to racing in June last year after being off the scene with an injury for 20 months and two years after he finished second beaten a neck by Sheemon at the Jewels in Cambridge.
It was also a long and winding road back for Doctor Bones, but he hit his straps in the autumn with a strong win over Wilma’s Mate and The Foot Tapper in a record 3.14.6 at Addington and was also very good there when resuming and winning a month ago.
Doctor Bones was not disgraced when racing parked from the 1400m and finishing fifth and three lengths behind Bordeaux in the Canterbury Park Trotting Cup a week later and Ford says he has remained in fine fettle since.
“It was a bugger when he drew the second line but if he gets away okay and gets a half decent run, I would expect him to be thereabouts.”
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