- The first day of the Riccarton Park Spring Season took place in almost ideal conditions, fine overhead and a Soft7 track which was upgraded to Soft6 after race 2.
- Te Akau Racing prepared two winners with BURGUNDY ROSE winning the Pauline Jeffs Open sprint the race after DANCARINA had won the previous race a Rating 65 1000 metres sprint. Both were ridden by stable apprentice Joe Kamaruddin.
- The other open race on the programme, over 1600 metres, went to the Winton trained FIRODEN who took its form to 010101 after being beaten in the Winning Edge Presentations Winter Cup at its last start. Corey Campbell rode the gelding for Leda Beck and headed home crowd favourite FRANKIE THE FOX and BURNVUE.
- Punters couldn’t see past the Mark Walker trained pair GRACE ‘N’ Grey and MARLBOROUGH BAY in the Murray Gillanders Memorial Three-year-old but both had to bow to the Timaru gelding REDMOND. Owned by Bruce and Karen Tapper and trained by Bruce in partnership with Varma Ramhit REDMOND took his record to 5 starts from two wins and never out of the first four.
- Samantha Wynne had a special moment in the last race riding and training ZACAT to win. ZACAT who had gone so close to giving retried trainer Neil Coulbeck a winner with his last ever runner on Grand National Day is owned by Kaikoura couple Colin and Tina Nimmo who also bred the four-year-old mare.
