McIlwrick leads the competition with 34 points after winning the first two heats of the four-race series at Addington last night.
The 25-year-old scored his first series victory by taking Bettor Chance to the lead with a bold mid-race move with a lap of the track to run from where the Stan Moore-trained 4yr-old went on to win comfortably.
McIlwrick took heat two of the series in vastly different circumstances as he and Gypsy’s Choice were held up in equine traffic until late in the home straight.
A gap eventually came as a patient McIlwrick searched for racing room and the Brad Mowbray-trained mare charged through to take an impressive victory.
John Morrison heads the pack of 11 North and South Island junior drivers chasing McIlwrick down on 21 points, ahead of Katie Cox on 20 points and Kimberly Butt on 17.
McIlwrick drives Franco Huntington for trainer Doug McLachlan in today’s first heat and trotter Mr Majestic for Dunedin trainer Ali Malcolmson in the final race of the series.
A wild week of New Zealand weather has devastated Trentham’s biggest day of jumps racing, but it could provide a windfall for the Forbury Park Trotting Club today.
The Wellington Racing Club was yesterday forced to abandon its Wellington Steeplechase and Hurdles meeting scheduled for today after parts of Trentham were submerged by heavy rain.
Club officials, New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing staff and stipendiary stewards inspected the Trentham track yesterday morning and agreed there was no option but to abandon today’s meeting.
"I understand it wasn’t a difficult decision to make to abandon,’’ NZTR general manager of racing Matthew Hall said.
"There was surface water on the figure-8 course and they did look at closing one jump and plotting a path around it, but that wasn’t feasible.
"There was also a lot of surface water from the 200m mark to the winning post and then around to the 1400. It was a significant area under water."
The forecast for tomorrow meant delaying the meeting was not a good option, Hall said.
The Wellington Steeplechase and Hurdles have been rescheduled and adjusted to fit into the Hastings meeting’s programme on Thursday.
The Wellington Steeplechase will remain a 5500m test, while the Hastings hurdling circuit means the Wellington Hurdles will now drop from 3400 to 3100m.
The abandonment of today’s Trentham meeting follows the postponement of Thursday night’s Forbury Park meeting, due to heavy snow on Wednesday.
The Forbury Park meeting will be broadcast on the premier Trackside 1 channel and in the primetime slot the Trentham meeting was scheduled to take.
That means today’s meeting’s race times have had to be adjusted as they now take the race times Trentham was previously using. Today’s first race goes at 12.10pm, rather than the previously advertised 11.45am.
The loss of Trentham’s meeting also means the Forbury Park meeting will be vying for punters’ dollars with only one other domestic meeting today — Te Rapa’s eight-race thoroughbred card.
An improved Metservice forecast could also result in more people attending today’s meeting than would have turned out in the cold and wet conditions in Dunedin on Thursday night.
— Jonny Turner, additional reporting NZ Racing Desk.
● Additional information for meetings today. —
M2 Waikato RCScratchingsRace 6: No Change.
Race 7: Equilibrium, Lupetani.
Race 8: Wee Sonya.
Weather, fine; track, slow9; rail, out 10m.
M7 Forbury Park TCWeather, fine; track, fast.
