BACKGROUND TO THE MAGIC MILLIONS WASHOUT

By Graham Potter | Saturday, January 11, 2025

On a day where a torrential morning downpour and on-going unstable weather conditions put the Magic Millions race-meeting under serious threat to the degree that the meeting ultimately had to be postponed. Chief Steward Josh Adams is to be given credit for keeping the media as informed as he could under circumstances which remain uncertain for a good period of time.

When a second serious rain-belt hit the track following the third race on the card (the track had been downgraded from a morning call of a soft 7 to a heavy 9 when the first race got underway), Adams, in the first instance, called the media together and announced that the jockey’s had been co-operative in supporting a decision to wait for half-an-hour to see what the weather-band would do and the meeting’s schedule was already back a race.

That put the meeting in a holding pattern.

Adams did say that that time that there was surface water on the track, but pointed out that venue did have floodlights, implying that if there was some relief in the weather and the track was deemed safe for racing, there might be an option to continue … BUT, he also stated that Racing Queensland and Magic Millions were busy working on contingency plans should the meeting not be able to continue.

That outcome was everybody’s short-priced favourite at that stage and there was already some conversation doing the rounds that remainder of the meeting would be postponed and transferred to Friday night.

Not long afterwards, with no weather relief forthcoming and with the standing water issues on the track still very much in play, Adams was back with the now inevitable news that the meeting had indeed been washed out and the remaining seven races were to be transferred to the Friday night slot.

“We delayed to give us some time to see what that weather-band was going to do,” explained Adams. “Unfortunately, there is still a fair bit of rain that’s hanging off the coast … and in the vicinity.

“We don’t believe that delaying any further is going to get us into a position to run the remainder of the card. There is surface water throughout the track and so we are going to transfer the rest of the meeting to Friday night.

"The meeting hasn’t been abandoned, it has been transferred.”

The remaining seven races on the 2025 Magic Millions Race-day card will kick off with the Magic Millions Subzero at 5.50pm on Friday and will end with the Magic Millions QTIS Open at 8.55pm.

The $3 million Magic Millions Two-Year-Old Classic will be the second race on the card at 6.03pm, while the $3 million Magic Millions Three-year-Old Guineas is scheduled for 7.45pm.

More articles