Image: GCTC
A little racing history will be made today with the Gold Coast Turf Club… when they host the first race meeting on their new polytrack at their Aquis Park venue.
Eight races were originally programmed, but one race fell out of the way, leaving seven races with total prize-money of $196,000 on offer.
Polytrack will be used on the Gold Coast until a proper course redevelopment is completed as part of a $63 million development program currently underway at the track.
104 nominations were received at the meeting… a number which on the first acceptance was reduced to sixty-four.
Regardless of how the track performs first-up under race conditions, some local participants believe that the poly-track has already proven its potential as a training track.
“The Polytrack has been an absolute boon in terms of what is available to us as a training track,” said Gold Coast-based trainer Trent Edmonds.
He said, ‘As far as the training track is concerned, we are behind eight balls for some time. Now that we’ve finally got a poly-track… it’s not just training and day-to-day stuff, it’s being able to jump out every week and get the horses a little fitter and educate them a little better. ,
“In Brisbane, they had grass jump-outs every Tuesday, dirt jump-outs at Eagle Farm on Thursdays, so they were ahead of the game…well ahead of us in that regard.
“We’ve been on the poly-track for four or five weeks now and it’s clearly already serving a very good purpose.”
Gold Coast-based jockey Andrew Malyon added to the idea. ‘I can’t tell you how it’s racing. At the moment it is all speculation.
“I think there will be a bit of trial and error at the start of the process while we learn more about the track, and the weather will play a part in that.
“Some horses like it… some don’t… but I have put horses on it, and I have no worries about the surface in the saddle,” Malyan concluded.
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