NZ HARNESS NEWS
Just as commentators in other parts of the country had got used to referring to Diamonds Day as Southland’s big day, Northern Southland Cup day is set to become just as big.
As far as black type races are concerned, Diamonds Day on 29 April (Sunday) with its three group twos – the Supremacy and Oaks for three-year-olds and the Diamond Creek Classic for juveniles – retains the edge.
Add the Southern Country Cups finals and it makes for not a bad ‘undercard’.
Northern Southland Cup day on March 10 has only group threes – the Northern Southland Cup, Southern Lights Trot and juvenile fillies’ classic.
But the strength of its support races continues to grow.
The latest addition is a three-year-old fillies trot, strategically placed a fortnight out from the New Zealand Trotting Oaks, with an advertised stake of $20,000.
The same size purse will also be available for what is being billed as the Grand Final of the various Nugget Finals held throughout the season.
For a few years, the Northern Southland club staged a futurity race at its March meeting, which required non-winners to be nominated in December.
After good support early on, nominations began to fall away.
One of the reasons given was that if you had a good maiden you had to hold-back racing it until half way through the season.
In response, the Southland Harness programme committee of Clark Barron, Geoff Knight, Murray Swain, Nathan Williamson and Jason Broad developed the Nugget concept.
All a horse has to do to be eligible is start in a non-win pacing race during the season. Every five or so meetings there is a final for those that have had that start (or starts) in the preceding period.
Seven such finals will be held before the Northern Southland meeting in March with the winners and runners-up guaranteed a start in the Grand Final.
A selection mechanism is in place to cover the likelihood of one or more of those 14 not being available.
The ‘Lazarus effect’ has touched both ‘finals’ held to date.
Only nine of the 14 available spots were filled when The Bus won in October, and 11 when Franco Santino was successful in November.
However, eight of the nine and six of 11 had been winners in one of their previous two starts and measurable betting on the races exceeded full-field races the same day.
Non-win trotters haven’t been forgotten and they have an equivalent Gold Chip scheme.
However, the smaller pool of horses mean fewer Gold Chip finals and no grand final in the pipeline as yet.
Nathan Williamson won the first Gold Chip final with She’s Allthe Craze at Wyndham on 12 November, a week after taking the second Nugget Final with Franco Santino.
Not surprisingly, he is a supporter of the two series’.
“We should be excited by it as two years ago we were running around for five and seven thousand dollars,” Williamson said.
“Now, with the Harness Racing New Zealand bonus, the minimum stake for maidens is $9500 and every maiden winner gets the chance to run for $12,000, still against maidens.
“With a $20,000 final, you’re enticed to keep a horse racing in Southland rather than want to sell.”
With that in mind, Williamson said Franco Santino finished his “wee break” this week and is back in work with the grand final his first major target.
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
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