That means the Ellerslie track was verti-drained on Monday to break up the top surface and let the rain that followed drain straight through it.<\/p>\n
By breaking up the top, it also all but eliminates the risk of the track becoming hard on top, then slippery if it rains.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take that risk away but it means if the rain continued all the way through after verti-draining, the top would break up a bit more and you would get a genuinely softer surface,\u201d Fulford said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for it to be walking a Soft 6 this afternoon, I am very confident, if the forecast is right, we will get it back to a Soft 5 by Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wind is getting up and that is crucial as it dries the track out so quickly and all she will need is a bit of sun and it will be close to perfect.<\/p>\n
Fulford said as long as the region doesn\u2019t get any significant rain on Saturday, \u201cwe could even be looking at an upgrade to a Good 4 before or during the meeting\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut of course rain on the day changes things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rail returns to the true for the entire 1876m circuit, with Fulford saying it will be back to its natural shape on the home bend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sometimes have that rail out to make the bend a bit rounder but we have put it right back to where it was designed to be and that means there will be some new ground on part of that bend.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can find because that makes the bend almost race a bit tighter, some horses will swing wider coming off it into the straight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellerslie has limited general admission sales available, with all hospitality sold out for the meeting, which hosts an after-party once the $4,590,000 worth of races are decided.<\/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 <\/b>Herald<\/b> as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the <\/b>Herald\u2019s<\/b> Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That means the Ellerslie track was verti-drained on Monday to break up the top surface and let the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[213271,21129,12452,213270,3576,21003,213273,11670,19266,9348,288,89100,212175,25046,35631,213272,1071,18378,45611,109578,79,16744,39362,16,15,9987],"class_list":{"0":"post-712229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-amazing","9":"tag-baby","10":"tag-down","11":"tag-ellerslies","12":"tag-for","13":"tag-from","14":"tag-fulford","15":"tag-green","16":"tag-head","17":"tag-horse","18":"tag-horse-racing","19":"tag-jason","20":"tag-karaka","21":"tag-looked","22":"tag-millions","23":"tag-perfectly","24":"tag-racing","25":"tag-recovery","26":"tag-sets","27":"tag-shook","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-storm","30":"tag-thursday","31":"tag-uk","32":"tag-united-kingdom","33":"tag-up"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115936725910981901","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}