GETTING READY FOR ACT 3 OF THE GOLD COAST / MAGIC MILLIONS THREE ACT DRAMA

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, January 15, 2025

No investigation needed here. This time it was just the weather gods chiming in with some mischief of their own to ensure that the multi-million dollar Magic Millions Raceday would not go the full distance last Saturday.

In fact, only three of the ten races carded were able to be completed before a halt was called to the meeting with the balance of seven races transferred to Friday night.

The connections of the winners of the three completed races would have been amongst those who didn’t care about that change of schedule at all … Heavenly Impact (Marcus Wilson / Jason Collett), Slippin’ Jimmy (David Vandyke / Tim Clark) and Amosu (Liam Birchley / Nikita Beriman) all getting the job done.
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The seven-day delay to proceedings will mean different things to different people.

For the Gold Coast Turf Club it will provide a third act of what has turned into a Three Act drama. The bottom-line hope is that Act 3 will turn out better than Act’s 1 and 2.

Act 1: The disturbing ‘poisoning’ of a section of the Gold Coast track racing surface, about which we still await a further report back from the internal and external investigations that were undertaken on this matter. All of those racing participants and enthusiasts who were so roundly inconvenienced and disappointed by the late, late transfer of the January 4 meeting from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast deserve as clear an update on the matter as authorities are able to give. The aim is not to attach blame. The aim is to be able to understand what happened.

Act 2: The washout of the Magic Millions Raceday on January 11 after only three of the seven races had been completed. (see separate story here - BACKGROUND TO THE MAGIC MILLIONS WASHOUT

Act 3: Prolonging the Magic Millions carnival for an extra week due to unfortunate circumstances does place and extra burden on the race-club who were just hours away from wrapping up their carnival. They now need to go the extra distance, but a positive is that the first Magic Millions under lights on Friday could provide an amazing backdrop for what could turn out to be a great finale to a carnival that has had more than its fair share of challenges.

If the carnival has a big finish, that might be the way it will be remembered.
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And what about the connections of the runners in those seven oh so lucrative Magic Millions that are scheduled to be decided on Friday night.

Some who wanted a heavy track for their runners might feel slightly aggrieved at the turn of events, but, importantly, all of their dreams are still alive, whereas they would have been over for all but seven sets of winners had last Saturday’s meeting been completed.
Now we just need the weather to play its part for Friday to, hopefully, be a great might out!