Punters don’t have a problem with more Gold Coast primary TAB Saturday meetings – there is a strong feeling that the primary Saturday calendar in Queensland should see the majority run at Eagle Farm and Doomben with more dates allocated to the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. TWO raceless Saturdays in a row might give the Brisbane tracks a rest but have again raised the question whether some of the major Cup meetings outside the metropolitan area should be run on a Sunday. SHOULD SOME QUEENSLAND COUNTRY CUPS BE RUN ON A SUNDAY? The new night racing season will be launched this Friday with the AFL Grand Final-eve meeting at Moonee Valley featuring the Moir Stakes and the Sunshine Coast racing in conjunction. Queensland seems happy to jump aboard with the Sunshine Coast linking with Melbourne venues like the Valley and Cranbourne but Sydney is dragging the chain with only a limited number of night meetings at Canterbury at this stage.
All that it lacks is a Summer Night Circuit of the three eastern states. Night racing is booming with the number of tracks installing lights increasing. If they want to continue with a sprinkling of metropolitan venues on midweek dates during the year then Sunday has to be largely restricted to the present successful concept of prime and secondary provincial meetings. It would seem that – in Victoria in particular – something has to give. “You’ve got to have the shop open when the customers want to buy,” RV CEO Andrew Jones said.Ĭhampion jockey Damien Oliver responded: “We’ve got that much night racing now … it's 24/7 with days, nights, already enough Sunday (country) racing.” Racing Victoria, extremely aware of the competition for the sporting and leisure dollar from various sporting codes, have refused to rule out more selected Sunday meetings if turnover on the two being conducted this month indicate that is what punters want. Leading jockeys and trainers immediately raised concerns declaring that back-to-back Sunday city cards being run in the Spring this year were sufficient having regard for the welfare of participants. No sooner had the trend to more night racing occurred in Victoria when officialdom signalled a growing interest in extra selected Sunday fixtures in the city. GREED seems to govern what happens in race programming these days with the TABs and SKY Channel arguably having more influence on the decision-making than the stakeholders. TABS & SKY HAVE TOO MUCH INFLUENCE ON PROGRAMMING
Sadly, that won’t happen in the current ‘cloud of secrecy’ environment that hangs over integrity of racing in Queensland. There’s a simple way for QRIC to silence the cynics – simply put out a Media Release indicating that stable raids had occurred on race eve at the premises of trainer X, Y & Z. By the way, before anyone jumps to conclusions, none of these trainers is based on the Downs. One is being called a ‘protected species whose horses have improved a furlong’, another has been accused of ‘camouflaging a change in trackwork for illegal treatment) and in the case of another it’s been suggested ‘a return to bad habits of the past’. The Waller ‘gossip mill’ has been occurring in Sydney while several stables that have been enjoying a welcome change of luck in Queensland have been copping plenty of bad mouthing as well. We are among Waller’s biggest critics when second-string runners upstage stable favourites but on the topic of the Queen’s funeral we wholeheartedly agree with Richie. There were suggestions that he made up the story that a family member had tested positive to COVID so that he could remain in Sydney were Spring goals were high on the stable agenda.īig ‘Richie’ Callander deservedly went into bat for ‘Sir Cryalot’ when he declared the rumours ‘laughable, cruel, misinformed and disappointing’. The rumour mill went into over-drive when champion trainer Chris Waller was forced to abandon plans to attend the funeral of the Queen. It seems those that enjoy success immediately become the target of malicious and ill-informed gossip. WHEN GOSSIP RUMOUR MILL GOES INTO OVERDRIVE IT CAN BE CRUEL
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