Three winners over the weekends racing took Japanese rider Masakazu (Masa) Tanaka to 17 winners for the season, and fifth place in the Jockeys’ rankings, as he starts to reel in the leading trio of Luis Corrales, Eric Cheung and Peter Ho.
Racing Administrators remain hopeful that Ellerslie will be the venue for this year’s Gr.1 Vodafone New Zealand Derby (2400m), but a call as to whether the bumper race meeting can proceed at Auckland’s premier course on Sunday will be made as late as Friday afternoon.