Top southern trainer packs his bags and goes home after HRNZ cans Cambridge features

Top trainer Phil Williamson is packing up and going home after the cancellation of Saturday night’s feature trot at Cambridge.

The country’s leading trainer of trotters brought Majestic Man and Love N The Port north from Oamaru for feature races over Christmas-New Year, with the $25,000 Charlie Hunter Free-for-all the next of their targets.

But when only five horses nominated for Saturday’s Cambridge feature, and only four for the $25,000 Cliff Thomas Memorial pacing race, featuring Copy That, Old Town Road and Alta Wiseguy, both events were cancelled by Harness Racing New Zealand.

“It’s very disappointing,” Williamson said. “But then a lot of things are disappointing in the game at the moment.

“I thought five was the hold-the-race-number. It’s frustrating when you make the decision to try to support them and they let you down.

“This has forced my hand. We’re going home. There’s no guarantee next week’s race will go ahead and I’m not going to risk it. How can I when my owners are saying why stay when there’s a chance it will happen again?”

Williamson said he returned home after last Saturday night’s Greenlane Cup at Auckland when Love N The Port finished second and would not have flown back yesterday afternoon had he thought this week’s race was in jeopardy.

By the time travel for the horses and accommodation was taken into account, it had been an expensive exercise for the owners coming north, enough to make him think twice about it next time.

“You just about need a guarantee before you leave home with horses to come this far but they don’t seem to consider the owners.”

Williamson said he “absolutely” would have started his pair on Saturday night had the club been successful in its bid to run the races with reduced stakes of $15,000, a compromise put by club CEO David Branch to handicapper Andrew Morris.

“It would have been ‘yes’ across the board from the trainers.

“It’s disappointing HRNZ doesn’t listen to more of the industry’s participants who own the horses.”

Graham Bowen … “no solutions from HRNZ, only road blocks.”Handicapper hung up the phone

Cambridge chairman Graham Bowen also believes such key decisions should not rest with only Morris, who hung up on Branch this morning rather than continue debating the issue.

“I’ve never been one for big boards making every decision but there needs to be more balance in the decision-making, instead of one person having so much influence.”

He also questioned the wisdom of HRNZ having its top two people, chairman John Coulam and CEO Gary Woodham, both on holiday at a very busy time of the year.

“I would have thought running a four or five-horse race would be a comparatively small cost to the industry.”

To put it into perspective, it was believed it cost the industry $1 million to $2 million every time a thoroughbred race meeting was called off -“and how many have we had canned lately?”

Tens of millions had also been ploughed into three artificial tracks.

Bowen said it was frustrating trying to run a harness club with such interference.

“We were thrown four of five meetings in January when no one else wanted them and we attracted these really nice horses that people take an interest in and go to the track to see. It doesn’t add up.”

Instead of being able to showcase the top horses, some of which would be contesting its $1million feature, The Race, in April the club was left with no drawcard.

Bowen said he could see no solutions coming out of HRNZ, only road blocks.