The featured Hollindale Stakes meeting … and integral part of the Queensland Winter Carnival will not take place at the Gold Coast … its traditional home … and will now instead be run at the Sunshine Coast for the second year in a row.
Last year the switch was due to the fact that the Gold Coast Turf Club was in the middle of the construction of a new grass track. This year the reason is that, in its current state, the condition of the new track surface has been deemed to be not good enough to host the meeting.
A switch to the Gold Coast Poly Track, which has been the go-to back-up for Gold Coast racing since the flaws in the grass surface were so blatantly, and sadly, exposed in a sandstorm of excessive sand kickback at The Jewel race meeting back on March 9 was never an option for a feature race-day.
The Sunshine Coast, who have recently had troubles of their own with their track, have stepped in the rescue the Hollindale meeting, which will be run on its scheduled date of May 11.
This development did not surprise anybody but, at the same time, it has reinforced a feeling of all around concern with the general state of racetracks in South-East Queensland.
*The Gold Coast track curator Nevesh Ramdhani resigned on Wednesday. He will return to Sydney to take up a position with the Australian Turf Club.