LARRY'S VIEW - EVERYTHING LOOKS SET FOR A GREAT DAY OF CARNIVAL RACING

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, May 4, 2012

Larry Cassidy currently has forty-two Group 1 successes behind his name. He is a multiple Premiership winning jockey having taken out three titles in Sydney and one in Brisbane. Larry’s View, the personal blog of this top class rider will appear on horseracingonly.com.au every Friday, workload permitting.

It’s a big day at the Gold Coast tomorrow.

Punters seem to believe the Gold Coast is a very particular racetrack in general and even more so when the going is on the heavy side and some have expressed their concerns about that.

The downpour that sidelined the meeting last week though will have a positive influence on tomorrow’s meeting. I believe the track will race very well this Saturday no matter what the track is like … whether the going is heavy or dead (I doubt it is going to be good) … because it never got raced on last Saturday.

In fact it won’t have been raced on for two weeks when the horses step out on it tomorrow. I don’t know, but I think logically they would have protected the inside leading up to the carnival, so the inside might have had even more than two weeks off.

If you put that into context, realizing that the Gold Coast is one of the most raced on tracks in Australia, now, because it’s had that break … which it very seldom gets … the track is going to race a lot better than people might think, or might even have become accustomed to.

On a normal week to week basis with the different weather influences, because it is raced on so much, I agree with punters that the track can juggle horse’s form up a bit. Having said that, there is the old ‘horses for courses’ theory. Some horses just won’t go well at certain tracks whatever the conditions, which is strange.

So, while I appreciate some of the punters concerns that have been put to me, I’m pretty confident that the track will play fairly on the day and that punters should not be deterred from betting on whatever they like.

Generally superior horse’s race well anywhere and good jockey’s ride well wherever they may be. Tomorrow’s meeting at the Gold Coast offers a better track than usual. Better quality fields than the norm. Top riders. Top stables.

Everything looks set for a great carnival’s day of racing!

Go and enjoy it!

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I have also been asked what my opinion is of the Anzac Day scheduling of a meeting at Toowoomba instead of having a meeting in Brisbane. This move clearly upset a large number of race-goers.

I think the scheduling of the meeting at Toowoomba last Wednesday on Anzac Day was a surprise to everyone. It was certainly a surprise that there wasn’t a meeting at Eagle Farm or Doomben.

It fact, once the reality settled in, I would say it was a big shock to everyone and a very poor choice of venue. I have always ridden on Anzac Day and it’s always a very big meeting.

I did say to my manager if you can get me four or five decent rides I would like to go, but obviously he couldn’t secure much so I didn’t get there.

Riding on the cushion track doesn’t bother me. It does bother a lot of trainers in terms of where they can then place their horses if they don’t want to run on the cushion track.

The fact that we had the Toowoomba meeting and then the following Sunday at the Sunshine Coast was also scheduled on a cushion track did complicate matters for trainers and that is probably why we had so many nominations for the Wednesday meeting this week at Eagle Farm.

I have heard that there is apparently some reluctance on the part of the metropolitan club to host a public holiday meeting because of the costs involved but, on days like Anzac Day, we are talking about looking after the core customer who we want to support the industry week in and week out … and to do that sometimes you have to look at more than the bottom line on a particular day.

Racing Queensland has to always strived to provide a product that people want. Toowoomba was never a venue that was going to draw a holiday crowd to the races and the fare they put on was not of a very high standard.

Had the racing been at Eagle Farm or Doomben I’m sure they would have got a fair holiday crowd turnout, the betting turnover would have been higher … and at the end of the day that means that more money would have come back to racing.

No, it wasn’t a good decision and I would like to think that sort of mistake won’t happen again.

Till next week,
Larry

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