34 more meetings in the north next season as Auckland reclaims Friday nights

The Auckland Trotting Club will race on 42 Friday nights next season and Cambridge has been relegated to mostly Tuesdays in a major revamp of the calendar promoted today as the first step in revitalising harness racing.

The 2024-25 calendar, released by Harness Racing New Zealand chairman Phil Holden will see 20% more meetings held around the country, 46 more nationwide with 34 more in the North Island.

The ATC gets 45 dates in all, 14 more than this season and crucially recaptures almost the entire Friday night audience.

The Waikato-Bay Of Plenty club is allocated 13 more meetings but 32 of its 41 dates will be held on Tuesday evenings, for lesser stakes. It retains only two Thursday night spots and six on the most lucrative Friday nights.

Holden says this will allow horses to race more frequently, owners to have more chances to increase their returns and punters to have more choice in their betting.

The Manawatu Harness Racing Club has come out a winner in the new calendar, with an extra seven meetings taking them to 19 for the season.

South Island clubs to be given more dates, starting August 1, include:

* The NZ Metropolitan Trotting Club which will have 65 meetings at Addington

* Timaru which gets 5 meetings

* Winton which will have 13 meetings and

* Invercargill which goes up to 15 meetings.

Phil Holden … “the revamped calendar is designed to breathe fresh life and confidence into harness racing after years of zero growth and decline.”“This calendar and the upcoming strategic initiatives represent a fundamental re-set designed to breathe fresh life and confidence into harness racing after years of zero growth and decline,” Holden said.

“The Board has listened to what the grass roots have been saying. Our horse population is heavily skewed to the lower to middle grade horses and so the new calendar, together with implementation of the Utilisation Group’s work, will open up many more opportunities for everyone involved, especially in the upper North Island.”

Holden says the time is right for these changes. “We’ve got a fantastic partner in Entain, and they will be able to leverage these additional meetings to generate more wagering income and more revenue for the code.

“That’s especially true of the northern region, which has been our Achillies heal for too long. A third of the population – and a third of all potential punters – live in Auckland.”

Holden says the calendar will be anchored by the introduction of “Friday Night Lights,” where harness racing will look to own the Friday night racing slot on a consistent basis. Alexandra Park and Addington will race together 35 times during the season.

Entain New Zealand managing director Cameron Rodger is a big believer in the Friday Night Lights brand.

“With our recent move to Free to Air, and with the investment we are making in our Trackside Broadcast, we believe there is an opportunity to create a high quality, highly marketable harness racing product that appears in living rooms consistently each Friday night.”

Rodger said the recent Night Of Champions broadcast from Cambridge gave punters a glimpse of what is in store.

HRNZ and Entain are also working on a strategic plan, due for release next month, that will support the calendar and provide meaningful incentives and targets for trainers, owners and breeders.

Ray Green … they’ll have to cater for a new pool of horses.Where are all the extra horses going to come from?

On hearing of the extra meetings, Lincoln Farms’ trainer Ray Green immediately asked the obvious: “Where are all these extra horses going to come from?

“We’re desperately short of horses, they must know that. We have enough horses to hold one meeting a week in the north and you can’t expect them to go round twice a week. I wouldn’t be keen on doing that.

“The only way I can see it working is if they can utilise the pool of horses who would ordinarily go to the trials and hardly ever race, the ones who aren’t super competitive at the moment.

“There could be more of those out there than you think. If you could cater for those horses a lot of people would keep them longer, rather than getting rid of them. I’ve got two going round in the amateur race at Cambridge on Thursday like that, Major Achievement and Commander Lincoln.”

Green believes two other changes will need to be made to ensure an adequate supply of horses.

“If they want horses to back up and race more regularly, they’ll have to can 2700 metre races and have more mile racing. A tough 2700 metre race can stuff your horse for a while.

“They also need to relax some of the medication rules and let us help our horses so they can keep racing. At the moment if you inject a stifle or hock you have to wait 21 days to race again.”

The full calendar for 2024-25 can be viewed here.