TRAC and Winning Edge Presentations are running the Winning Edge Presentations Championship Race Series again in 2011 with 15 qualifying races and a final, which will be run at Tauranga on Saturday 23 April 2011 over 1600m for prize money of $60,000.
TRAC and Winning Edge Presentations see this race series has a great opportunity for Rating 70, 80 and 90 horses to qualify and race for significant prize money in the final.
Full details of the race series are in the January edition of the NZTR Thoroughbred Racing Monthly and on the NZTR Website www.nzracing.co.nz with the first race in the series being run at Rotorua on Friday, 18 February.
Campbell Moncur, TRAC Chief Executive, acknowledged the valuable support provided by Winning Edge Presentations in being able to run the series again and also the extra prize money contribution made by NZTR for the Final. “This is a great series and one that is well supported by owners and trainers Moncur said.”
Alistair Ewart from Winning Edge Presentations commented: “We love our involvement with New Zealand racing and especially appreciate our exciting series with TRAC. It gives owners a real opportunity to get their horses to progress and show their true potential.”
Winning Edge Presentations is Australasia’s leading trophy, merchandising and promotional product specialists and supply all the TRAC group trophy and merchandising requirements.

On top of their sponsorship of the Listed Team Wealleans Matamata Cup, the Wealleans group of companies will also underwrite a series of lucky punter betting voucher prizes at Saturday’s Racing Matamata meeting.  

The TRAC group of racing clubs and prominent industry stakeholders Alan and Colleen Jackson have joined forces to boost the stakes for a series of three-year-old maiden races starting in September and running through to Christmas.

Through the Jacksons’ Broadway Racing and Breeding Partnership, stakes for industry day three-year-old maiden races scheduled at Taupo and Matamata will receive a boost of $3,000.

That will increase the stakes for five selected races from $5,000 to $8,000, making them extremely lucrative to connections of new season three-year-olds. Under the conditions of the Broadway Partnership Race Series, should entries warrant the splitting of any of the selected races, a further $3,000 top-up will be allocated.

Alan Jackson was at the time of his retirement last year the Australasian chairman and senior international vice-president of the Boston Consulting Group, which included work for racing bodies across Australasia.

For several years earlier this decade he served as an independent director on the New Zealand Racing Board, when he headed the NZRB’s taxation group that led to major concessions under former Racing Minister Winston Peters’ watch.

He and his wife either own or part-own several racehorses in New Zealand and Australia along with a growing broodmare band, while they also own the well appointed stable occupied by successful Matamata trainer Lance Noble.

The current star of their racing team is the Bart Cummings-trained Faint Perfume, in whom they share ownership with Dato Tan Chin Nam. Faint Perfume’s wins last season included the Gr. 1 VRC Oaks and Vinery Stud Stakes as well as the Gr. 2 Wakeful and Kewney Stakes and she is about to embark on a Melbourne spring campaign.

While it may seem a surprising move to sponsor supposedly low-key provincial races, Dr Jackson has no problem in justifying his decision.

“Our sponsorship will lift those races to a respectable level and while it might be selective, I believe that new season three-year-olds deserve a chance at a decent stake,” he says.

There’s no coincidence that through raising these midweek maiden stakes to $8,000 the winners will qualify for sale to Hong Kong.

“I’m quite prepared to answer the question as to whether this is encouraging sales overseas,” he says. “It’s a fact of life that sales to Asia and elsewhere provide the means for owners and trainers to survive in the first place and to continue to invest.”

The Broadway Racing & Breeding Partnership Race Series runs as follows:

DATE VENUE RACE CONDITIONS DISTANCE STAKES

8 September  Taupo Maiden three-year-old 1200m $8,000
6 October  Taupo Maiden three-year-old 1200m $8,000
29 October  Matamata Maiden three-year-old 1200m $8,000
2 December  Matamata Maiden three-year-old 1400m $8,000
22 December  Matamata Maiden three-year-old 1200m $8,000
 
In announcing the Broadway Racing & Breeding Partnership Race Series, TRAC Chief Executive Campbell Moncur agrees that the boost to stakes will provide a welcome opportunity for stakeholders.

“Under the new season funding model and given their current financial position, northern clubs have no option but to set their base industry day maiden stakes at $5,000,” he says.

“The support provided by Alan and Colleen Jackson comes at an opportune time and will make the races in the series very attractive. Their generous sponsorship is most welcome and enables TRAC to continue to support stakeholders as best they can.”

Record milestones by licence-holders have come thick and fast lately in what is in most other respects a low-key time on the New Zealand racing calendar.

Forty years and six weeks after taking out his trainer’s licence, Graeme Rogerson became the first person to prepare the winners of 2,000 races in this country when Pocket Diary scored at New Zealand’s northern-most course, Ruakaka, on May 26.

Only days earlier the jockey associated with that landmark win, Opie Bosson, had reached his own milestone, 1,000 wins in New Zealand, with a treble at the New Plymouth meeting on May 15.

By the end of last month Bosson was eyeing another record – his own best single season tally of 128 wins. At Awapuni on June 3, two wins took him to 127 wins and by remarkable coincidence helped the other record seeker, trainer Mark Walker, towards his goal of a record number of wins in a season.

Last season Walker had got to within two wins of the long standing record of 104 wins set by Dave and Paul O’Sullivan in the 1992-93 season. A haul of three wins at Awapuni last week took his tally to 103, and while a fresh record became inevitable, the Matamata conditioner did it in style with two wins from two starters at Wanganui last Saturday.

It was also appropriate that Bosson, who in the absence of James McDonald has unofficially resumed his role as first choice Te Akau Stables, should be associated with Walker’s record. His easy win on the Walker-trained two-year-old Change Of Heart early in the Wanganui programme equalled his benchmark of 128 wins as well as taking Walker to level pegging with the O’Sullivans’ 104-win record.

Then it was up to another regular provider of Te Akau winners, Chris Johnson, to set the new trainers’ mark when he rode a rejuvenated Flying Fulton to victory. Not to be outdone, Bosson added a win on the Howie Mathews-trained Crocodile Canyon late in the Wanganui programme to notch his personal best of 129 wins.

Another brace on Monday at Foxton took Bosson to within 14 wins of matching current premiership leader James McDonald. Seven wins in the first week June and solid prospects on the immediate horizon are going to add welcome spice to the race for the 2009-10 jockeys’ premiership.

For the meantime, however, the big story is Mark Walker’s achievement in stamping himself as the dominant trainer of the current decade. With a lead of 30 wins he has made no contest of the trainers’ premiership and on July 31 will register his fifth title in the past six years.

Under the management of Walker and founder David Ellis, Te Akau has established itself as the slickest racing operation ever seen in this part of the world, one that has made an art form of syndication at all levels with results to match. Te Akau incorporates a major stable at Matamata supplemented by smaller operation at Karapiro and a satellite in the South Island.

No doubt about it, it’s a formula that works.