A bit of racing history will be made today with the Gold Coast Turf Club breaking new ground … in a manner of speaking … when they host the first race meeting on their new Polytrack at their Aquis Park venue today.
Eight races were originally programmed, but one race fell by the wayside leaving the seven races with total prize-money of $196,000 on offer.
The Polytrack will be used at the Gold Coast until the redevelopment of the course proper is completed as part of an on-going $63 million development program which is currently taking place at the track.
The meeting received 104 nominations … a number which came down to sixty-four at first acceptances.
Irrespective of how the track performs first-up under race conditions, some local participants believe that the Poly-track has already proved its worth in its capacity as a training track.
“The Polytrack has been an absolute godsend in terms of it being available to us as a training track,” said Gold Coast based trainer Trent Edmonds.
“We have been behind the eight-ball as far training tracks are concerned for a some time. Now that we have finally got the Poly-track … it is not just the training and the day-to-day stuff, its being able to jump out every week and get the horses a little bit fitter and get them a little bit better educated.
“In Brisbane, they had grass jump-outs every Tuesday, dirt jump-outs at Eagle Farm on Thursdays so they were ahead of the game … way far ahead of us in that regard.
“We’ve been on the Poly-track for four or five weeks now and it clearly is already serving a very good purpose.”
Gold Coast based jockey Andrew Mallyon added this view. ‘I can’t tell you how it is going to race. It’s all speculation at the moment.
“I think there will be a bit of trial and error early in 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’ve put horses over it, and I’ve got no concerns about the surface going into the meeting,” concluded Mallyon.”