The mid-meeting hailstorm sent punters rushing for cover and turned the whole course white, with Mills admitting that, like many, he initially had fears about the meeting being abandoned after racing was delayed 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they were allayed pretty quickly when the jockeys inspected he track,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a lot of senior jockeys out there and while it was very unusual to see so much hail, they were adamant it wouldn\u2019t compromise safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Craig Grylls said to me \u2018it is safe to keep racing, it will just be ugly\u2019,\u201d said Mills.<\/p>\n
He was encouraged how many punters remained on track even after the storm as temperatures plummeted, and some who did leave even returned \u2013 but the financially fallout will be significant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were lucky that being a sold-out event, our customers had already bought their tickets so the crowd was great and when it was sunny for Race 2, the course had amazing energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut nobody could have foreseen what happened next.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were a bit unlucky because I was talking to some people who were staying just four kilometres away and they said they only got a tiny bit of what hit us.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it wasn\u2019t ideal and we are going to take a hit on turnover and food and beverage sales but considering everything, the rest of the meeting went off very well and we have good horses winning the biggest races.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CJC will soon reach out to the connections of 2000 Guineas winner Romanoff as he will get first right of refusal of their slot for the $4 million NZB Kiwi at Ellerslie on March 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur policy is to offer the slot to the winner of the 2000 Guineas first and then the 1000 Guineas, so we will start making calls about that when we get over the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Romanoff and New Zealand 1000 Guineas winner Well Written are eligible for the NZB Kiwi, for which horses have to be born in New Zealand or sold at a New Zealand Bloodstock sale, with several other slot holders already chasing Well Written.<\/p>\n
While Romanoff\u2019s trainer Pam Gerard can return home to Matamata with the 2000 Guineas quinella to add to her win in the classic last year, she has another special moment waiting for her on Monday.<\/p>\n
Last season\u2019s Guineas winner Savaglee returns to her stable today after a long break from racing, having not been seen on race day since finishing second to Feroce in the Australian Guineas at Flemington in March.<\/p>\n
He has a myriad of options, including the $1 million Elsdon Park Aotearoa Classic at Ellerslie on Karaka Millions night, before his connections go hunting for the all-important Australian Group 1 win that so cruelly eluded him at Flemington.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has had a good grounding of about three months, including being ridden and some water-walker work,\u201d The Oaks Stud boss Rick Williams, who manages Savaglee, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we think he will be trialling in four or five weeks but it is too early to set a programme for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Aotearoa Classic could be one target as he will definitely start off here in New Zealand and, all going well, have a three- or four-race campaign, which we would like to include an Australian race, preferably Group 1, if all is going well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Savaglee is the $7 second-favourite for the Aotearoa Classic behind last season\u2019s NZB Kiwi winner Damask Rose.<\/p>\n
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mid-meeting hailstorm sent punters rushing for cover and turned the whole course white, with Mills admitting that,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6162,8615,10542,5972,48338,1644,305,12514,32892,9878,111,43,139,69,90,1523,40438,1534,673,94065,1533],"class_list":["post-138090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-cloud","tag-come","tag-cup","tag-day","tag-fallout","tag-financial","tag-have","tag-leave","tag-mick","tag-monday","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-over","tag-riccarton","tag-saturday","tag-storm","tag-weathered","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}