THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - TIME TO SHED LIGHT ON THE FUTURE OF NIGHT RACING AT THE COAST

By Graham Potter | Sunday, October 28, 2012

Night racing returned to Corbould Park on Friday.

In spite of it being one of two meetings in a congested schedule in South East Queensland on the day … a seven race card was also completed at Ipswich during the afternoon … the positioning of the Sunshine Coast meeting held some merit in terms of the fact that it was run in conjunction with the Group 1 Manikato Stakes meeting at Moonee Valley in which Queensland race-goers had a strong interest courtesy of the appearance of the Brisbane based star Buffering who, unfortunately, again found a Group 1 victory to be an elusive target.

The number of night meetings at the Sunshine Coast has been drastically reduced from last year though, with good reason. There is now only a small sprinkling of them over the summer period as opposed to the regular, weekly sequence of meetings that took place over the corresponding period a year ago.

Those meetings were not particularly well supported, both in the number of participants and, more significantly, in the turnover figures, so the cut was not an unkind one and was made on sound business principles … principles that might have a further restrictive effect on the club’s activities down the line.

In fact, whether these night fixtures at the coast can remain in place long term is seriously open to question.

It has an obvious positive side. Any extra races paying stake money, whatever their level, means there is more opportunity for riders, trainers and owners to gain some extra income. That, at the same time, to state another obvious point, is an outgoing cost to Racing Queensland, and the bottom line is that it is all about the return on investment for both the ruling body and the race-club.

With the cost of running the meeting under floodlights … unless there is a resounding and, as yet, unsighted turnaround in events in the short-term … few would bet that the concept will be a long-term success.

The lighting, which is obviously necessary for the night meetings to take place, is another story altogether.

The GM Poles website confirms that the lights ‘involved the design, installation and commissioning of forty unique floodlighting towers and footings.’ The site also states, ‘the largest tower is 40m tall and supports 48x arenavision fittings. In total nearly 900 floodlights were utilised.’

The Australian Sports Lighting Solutions website comments on the project saying that it was ‘designed over a three month period and then constructed over a six month period’ and that ‘the project included … illumination of both tracks with the largest single floodlighting installation ever completed in Australia.’

And the cost? I won’t even go there!

All I can say it took a lot of time, trouble and expense for what quickly became a ‘white elephant’ of gigantic proportions.

Now we all know that was a different place and a different time under a different rule.

But this is now and several questions have to be answered soon if the path plotted into the future is to lead to a fruitful outcome for racing.

One of them is, is there light at the end of the tunnel for ‘the largest single floodlighting installation ever completed in Australia’ or is it time for Racing Queensland to pull the switch, cut their losses and see what sort of return they can get in the sales market for, ‘Floodlights. An unwanted ‘gift’. Hardly used.’

That might sound harsh, but so is the glare of reality and we all have to face up to that sooner or later!

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