Even Harness Racing New Zealand handicapper Andrew Morris admits to being “more than a little surprised” by the number of horses preparing for racing’s resumption.
The sheer volume has prompted HRNZ to run two trial meetings this week, with 19 races today (Wednesday) and 12 on Thursday. That equates to 262 horses.
“It is encouraging,” says Morris, “certainly it’s never happened before but we haven’t had this situation before either where racing has stopped for two months and now everyone is plotting the same course to get back to the races.”
HRNZ had done research via their database during the lockdown and had a fair idea of how horses would be back, though Morris admits it’s “exceeded that and there are a good amount of horses around.”
Nationally pre COVID-19 fields averaged 10.8 horses a race. Now Morris expects that average will rise to 12, with big numbers in Canterbury and Invercargill initially and then Auckland and Cambridge catching up later in June.
“All the public training tracks up there were closed during the lockdown so it will take them a bit longer.”
With such big trial numbers it all augurs well for big fields when racing resumes at Addington on May 29.
“It’s satisfying, we will have more than enough”
Fields for Wednesday https://infohorse.hrnz.co.nz/datahrs/trial_fields/052032tf.htm
Fieds for Thursday https://infohorse.hrnz.co.nz/datahrs/trial_fields/052132tf.htm
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
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