Annual Amberley meeting set to be another bumper day

Tuesday harness racing has traditionally drawn the ire of the New Zealand industry, but when it’s a public holiday and hosted by a club steeped in over 130 years of history.

The Amberley Trotting Club looks set for a bumper event for it’s now traditional Waitangi Day meeting tomorrow (Feb 6^th) with a stellar twelve race programme.

Depending on where you get your weather forecast, some experts are predicting the local temperature to get as hot as 31 degrees by mid-afternoon and club President, Ross Rennie, is excited about the prospect of a bumper crowd.

“I’ve been President for eight years now and we have been on Waitangi day for probably the last ten years,” said Rennie.

“We used to race in early January but when the opportunity came up to race on the public holiday, we took it and have not looked back with great support from the locals and wider racing community.

“The 12 race programme we have attracted is fantastic and in saying that, it’s a bit hard and a challenge HRNZ have probably got to start looking at. When you have so many race meetings within a 200km radius you really start to cannibalise each other and I feel sorry for some of the other smaller clubs who we’ve had to go head to head with.

“By the same token, we have got some great fields and should make for a great days punting with some really even betting races,” he said.

As with many of the smaller one meeting clubs, Amberley operates successfully without any facility of its own and has done for in excess of 50 years. The club has a strong relationship with the Rangiora Racecourse having first raced there in 1974 at the directive of the New Zealand Racing Authority who deemed both the galloping club and trotting club should centralise to facility 20 minutes south.

In the presiding years, the Amberley club received its first on course totalisator licence for its meeting held on 24 January 1981. Not until the annual meeting of 23 January 1994 was the first full totalisator meeting of the club held at Rangiora Raceway where annual summer meetings continue today.

According to the clubs website, many NZ Trotting Cup winners began their racing/trotting careers at the Amberley Trotting Club’s meetings with the likes of Lookaway, Lordship, Invicta, Spry, Globe Bay, Arapaho, Robalan all having their race day debut at the Amberley meet. It may pay to take an extra look through the field in Race Two to see wheter another diamond can be procured from the rough!

When discussing some of the many forms of entertainment and attractions for the day aside from the racing itself, it’s clear that Rennie and his committee have worked tirelessly to ensure the future of the club with patrons on course almost no chance of finding themselves board.

One of the more prudent decisions was that of taking the racing back to the grass surface which at the time wasn’t that popular with its host for the day.

“We used to race on the grass surface all the time and switched to the grit for about six or seven years, and when I became President I pushed hard to make the change back to the grass again.

“The Rangiora Club itself didn’t really want to have anyone use the grass, but when they saw the crowd we were able to attract, the very next Christmas meeting they had was on the grass as well and has been ever since.

“The one thing about Rangiora is it is very close for the crowd to get too. It’s not the longest straight in New Zealand but it is long enough to accommodate a lot of gazebos and caravans and the public are just about close enough to touch the horses if they come down the outside of the track,” he said.

Given the prominence of the national holiday, the club as alluded to earlier is expecting a ripper crowd on course courtesy of it’s free entry policy and has left no stone unturned in making sure those in attendance have a brilliant day out.

“One thing we try to do as a smaller club is what money we have in the bank, we strive to see it going back to our stakeholders,” said Rennie.

“That means the kids as well. There is a boy and girls bike for the kids aged under five. We also have a lucky horse shoe draw which is 15 horse shoes on the board with little bags tied to each of them with prizes with the smallest value of any of them being around $50. The kids come and fill out an entry form and they go in the draw, and we will call out the winners throughout the day and has proved popular for a number of years.

“We have a UE Boom to give away for the six year old and older kids and HRNZ have come to the party with 200 goodie bags to give away as well.

“For the adults, we have a mystery envelope prize where we pick out five winners and they come up and pick out an envelope and thanks to Ross & Angela Gordon and Telfers Electrical, we have a 55 inch TV and a sound bar for the top prize, and second prize is a Weber barbeque.

“There aren’t too many tracks who would offer that and I would say those prizes alone are an incentive enough to spend a bit of petrol money and come out and enter the draw because if you walk home with something like that it would feel like winning a race,” he said.

The Club is also digging into their pockets and getting behind one of Courtney Buchanan’s (HRNZ Marketing) wonderful charitable schemes with Team Teal supporting Ovarian Breast Cancer.

“We have once again sponsored the Team Teal concept given we are one of the first clubs racing in February and $100 will go into the fund from the club for every successful female driver on the day with HRNZ contributing around the same.

“Something else we have is called ‘Frocks at the trots’ and Amberley is the first one to kick it off, so through the month of February throughout the country there is a fashion in the field type of event with a final to be hosted at Addington at the end of the month.

“The main prize is a trip to Mooloolaba and the winners of the heats at Amberley and Hororata will be driven to the final in a stretch limousine. It looks like we have a field of about 14 so far and that is likely to grow on the day. The only thing the contestants have to consider is having a teal item in their attire.

“Dean Lester will also be running the annual punters club in association with ‘the whale’ and the TAB have chucked $500 into the pool to go with whatever we pick up on course,” he said.

The 12 race programme is underpinned by the $25,000 Rangiora Equine Services Amberley Cup which after two scratchings will see a field of eleven runners contest the feature which is part of the $100,000 Country Championship framework.

It is a quality field with plenty of form with the likes of the Craig Ferguson trained Da Vinci (Art Major), the Colin & Julie DeFilippi trained Heza Sport (Sportswriter) and the last start Blenheim Cup winner in the Robert & Jenna Dunn trained, Double Time (A Rocknroll Dance).

“It’s a really open affair but I am going to go Double Time, I was up at Blenheim and the way it won was impressive and the Dunn team is going along really nicely at the moment,” said Rennie.

Another race of significance comes in the seventh of the card with the third running of the Glen Scott memorial in memory of the late North Canterbury horseman.

“Glen Scott was a big supporter of the club and devoted to supporting the country races and every meeting we had for a number of years, he set up a big marquee in the car park and got his mates out.

“His wife Jenny has continued that on and we have had the Glen Scott Memorial race for the last two years now and it would be so cool if Take After Me could win it for the family. It would be quite emotional but I would love them to win it,” said Rennie.

Another neat feature of the Amberley Club is the way they recognise the importance of the owners themselves and for a very long time have gone above and beyond in making sure they are recognised throughout the day for their support of the meeting.

“One thing Amberley has done well before my time is acknowledge the winning owners with a trophy for every race and it’s something we will continue to do for as long as we have a license,” he said.

Harnesslink would like to congratulate the committee for the Amberley Club and wish them all the best for their meeting tomorrow. Those on the committee who volunteer their time and resources are (in no particular order);

Philippa Nairn, Carol Coleman, Ross Rennie (President), Brent, Brian & Marie Borcoskie, Doug Lang, Gary Rennie, Graeme Chandler, Grant Columbus, Robert Hanna, Robbie & Brooke Close, Josh Lane, Pam Ashworth, Bert Snow (Secretary), Russell Morrison.

For more information about the Amberley Trotting Club and it’s festivities, you can visit their website.

For complete Amberley race fields, click here.

by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink