| SECRETARIES & EXECUTIVE STAFF |
YEAR: 2010
 |
Tony Lye will be the first to admit he was the last of the rubber, pen and pencil men at Addington Raceway. After putting up stout resistance, he eventually made friends with the computer – well, sort of. But when the time came a fortnight back to give it one last click, there wasn’t much sorrow either way.
There are some old habits and patterns that come after doing much the same job for 36 years, and Lye knew he had them. For more than 20 years he was the efficient and super steady Racing Manager for the NZ Metropolitan Trotting Club, but tough times for the club has caused work casualties and Lye is one of them.
He is sad to leave a responsible job that he’s been very good at and widely respected in. “It’s fair to say that I think I’m going before my time” – he’s 60 – “but that’s the card I’ve been dealt,” he said.
Lye had the manual aspect of taking nominations and drawing up the fields down to a fine art, “but the computer changed it all. I was slow to react – I was a pencil, pen and rubber man. Why should I change? This is the way I’ve always done it. So it’s true to say I did resist it.”
This area is just one of many that Lye has seen change dramatically. What else?
“The development of Raceway land around the track, the building of the Westpac Centre, the new stabling complex, and the loss of the huge carparks which we needed for most of the meetings when we had fewer of them years ago. When you think of it, Addington Raceway was once the closest farm to the centre of the city”
Lye said when he started there were about 20 meetings a year between the three clubs – the Met, Canterbury Park and New Brighton – and a staff of eight.
“We had a card for every horse, about two hundred and fifty of them. All the details were typed in – owner, breeder, trainer, age, colours, and when a colt became a gelding we would pick the card out and turn the ‘c’ into a ‘g’. There was also a card with the last starts of each horse, and we would choose the fields from the form on the cards. Back then a raceday was a big day”
Cup Day was always the biggest day of the year, and Lye said it was never a difficult one if the preparations were properly made. “You’d hold your breath that everything went well, but it did because everyone stepped up.”
Lye has difficulty accepting the situation where some of the country clubs can pay higher stakes than a similar class at Addington. “That’s completely wrong. It should be an incentive for any owner or trainer to race at a metropolitan meeting and race for more money. I know quite a few like to take their picnics to other tracks, but it’s not as hard to win at Addington as it used to be. It’s an anomaly that is not right.”
Lye has seen handicapping systems come and go. This current one seems to be the flavour they want, and the concessions are a big part of it.”
Redundancy means something new ahead of him. I won’t miss the repetition, but I’ll miss going to the races, the day-to-day activity of the office, and the good staff they have there.”
Credit: Mike Grainger writing in HRWeekly 7Apr2010