THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - TIME TO FAMILIARISE YOURSELF WITH FIXTURE LIST CHANGES

By Graham Potter | Sunday, June 30, 2013

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily

It is a busy weekend for racing at the Sunshine Coast.

Its feature meeting for the year, headlined by the Caloundra Cup, took centre stage yesterday with the one day back-up of the usual Sunday fixture taking place today.

The double-header translates into a rush of seventeen races for local racegoers to take in on a weekend that officially brings down the curtain on the 2013 Queensland Racing Winter Carnival.

It is usual for the racing landscape to change quite dramatically when the action transitions from the carnival hype to the often mundane, regular schedule but, starting with the new financial year tomorrow, there will be changes that racegoers will not be familiar with and the impact they will have on the fragile equilibrium of the industry will be an interesting point of focus in the coming months.

The re-allocation of race meetings in the next six months will be a case in point, particularly for those who eye racing from a Sunshine Coast perspective.

The decision to undertake re-construction work at Toowoomba at this time to return that track to grass from its present cushion track surface meant that a new venue had to be found for Toowoomba’s traditional Saturday evening time-slot.

With the Sunshine Coast being the only other track in South East Queensland with floodlights, it was a no-brainer that the Sunshine Coast was the logical club to pick up the slack … but, when it was suggested in the original proposed draft fixture list that the Sunshine Coast lose their own traditional Sunday race-day as a consequence of the enforced change, the club was very unhappy. Its officials contested the issue and some level of compromise was found between the club and the ruling body, Racing Queensland.

But the change is still one that will be felt. July, for example, will be a strange month for those who regularly attend Sunshine Coast race-meetings.

Starting July 13, there will be four consecutive weeks of Saturday twilight racing at the Sunshine Coast. Also, for three weeks in July there will no meeting at the Coast on the Sunday (July 7, July 21 and July 28) … so everybody would do well to familiarise themselves with their upcoming on-course action options.

Racing on Sundays at the coast is back in fashion in August with three Sunday meetings scheduled, but then the Sunday action is restricted again the following month with meetings scheduled on only two out of five Sundays in September … and so on, until the end of the year, or thereabouts, when the new Toowoomba track is set to take its place in the schedule.

The bottom line is there is a fundamental change to the routine of regular Sunshine Coast racegoers and their response to being asked to support unfamiliar night meetings as opposed to their regular Sunday afternoon family outing will be one that will be monitored with the strange mixture of hope and trepidation.

This situation is not of Sunshine Coast Turf Club’s making. In fact the debate about whether there is any actual benefit in re-doing the Toowoomba track and if that multi-million dollar investment can be justified rages on in many quarters, but whatever the ultimate result there is, the new track is going ahead irrespective of any positive or negative outcome.

The comfort of a familiar routine has been disrupted and the Sunshine Coast Turf Club and its racegoers now have to deal with the cards they have been dealt.

Given the fact that the Sunshine Coast Turf Club has worked hard to build a solid relationship with the local community over the years, the chances are fair that everyone will come out of the next six months relatively unscathed, but if club officials have worked hard in the past, they might just have to put in an extra shift or two in the coming months to ensure that the ‘Good Ship Racing’ remains on an even keel.

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