SKYCITY Gets Ready for NZ’s Biggest Racing Event

MEDIA RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

15 February 2007

SKYCITY Gets Ready for New Zealand’s Biggest Racing Event of the Year

It’s all on at SKYCITY with less than a month to go until the beginning of Auckland Cup Week and New Zealand’s biggest horse racing event of the year - the SKYCITY Auckland Cup on 7 March!

The 328m high Sky Tower will be glowing green and purple from Thursday 1 to Wednesday 7 March to match the official colours of Ellerslie Racing, home of the SKYCITY Auckland Cup race, and there will be plenty of activities at SKYCITY prior to and during Auckland Cup Week.

Big screens throughout SKYCITY will be showing all events during Cup Week for racing fans that can’t make it to Ellerslie and the magnificent silver Auckland Cup trophy will be onsite from 25 February to 1 March.

SKYCITY’s Grand Hotel, the official hotel of Cup Week where the who’s who of racing will be staying, also has a number of special packages available for racing fans who wish to make a day (and a night) of it! See www.skycity.co.nz for more details.

Across the road at Bar3, resident mixologist Andy Ruzich, has come up with a little beauty of a candy-topped champagne cocktail to cap off a day in the sun at the races, called the Auckland Candy Cuptail.

The cocktail features a green apple candy lining atop a flute full of Lindauer Special Reserve bubbles and purple Parfait Amour and will be served exclusively at Bar3 from the 1st to the 10th of March.

ENDS

Notes to editors
First run in 1874, the SKYCITY Auckland Cup is one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious horse races.
- The fastest time was set by Sea Swift in 1988 at 3 minutes 15.66 seconds
- The first female jockey to win the race was Maree Lyndon on Miss Stanima in 1990
- The most successful jockey(s) of the last 30 years are Grant Cooksley and Noel Harris with 3 wins apiece.
- Superstar sire Zabeel has sired the most winners of the Cup with four - Jezabeel, Able Master, Our Unicorn and Bazelle. He has sired four of the last nine winners
- SKYCITY has been the naming rights sponsor of the SKYCITY Auckland Cup since 2006.
- Keen Sky tower observers will note that the lights they are a-changing during the month of February and March. Lighting dates and details are as follows
o 12 Feb – 1 March: Chinese New Year (red and gold)
o 2 March – 7 March: SKYCITY Auckland Cup (green and purple)
o 8 March – 25 March: Auckland Festival, AK07 (orange)

SKYCITY’s Auckland Candy Cuptail

Ingredients
15ml Parfait Amour
1 sugar cube
1 tsp green apple cocktail candy

Method
Sponge soak a champagne flute rim in sugar syrup and dip into a saucer of green apple candy to prepare the glass. Put a sugar cube on a bar spoon and pour over Parfait Amour. Tip spoon contents into the glass and top with Lindauer Special Reserve when ready to serve.

© Scoop Media