ROB'S SHOUT - THE EAGLE FARM TRACK DEVELOPMENT: ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK

By Robert Heathcote | Thursday, April 9, 2015

Robert Heathcote is one of the leading racehorse trainers in Brisbane. 'Rob's Shout', the personal blog of the multi-premiership and multi Group 1 winning trainer appears weekly, exclusively on HRO.

The grass planting has commenced on sections of the new Eagle Farm race track and its unusual how it’s done.

Instead of new turf being laid as I expected, it is kind of like the turf is mulched up and then sprinkled over the ground where the roots then takes hold and grow. Quite extraordinary as the A grass has really taken off in a short time as can be seen in the photos (opposite).

I took them last week and it’s amazing how it’s come along just in a week.

Although work is progressing steadily enough on one aspect of the project, a recent official club announcement has indicated that racing is unlikely to return to Eagle Farm until next Year.

That’s hardly surprising to be honest with the never ending delays and the apparent lack of precise planning.

The tunnels and culvert construction is not likely to begin until after June/July this year.

This is as much to allow us to train the horses properly on a complete track with the winter carnival on our doorstep ... and I assume to get the finances sorted with the government to fund the tunnels.

I have to say having the full training track available to us has been an enormous help during the new track construction. For several months we only had a three-quarter track and the difference in the results of the locally trained horses was plain to see.

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There should be a full enquiry at some stage into how this whole new track development has turned into such a fiasco.

What should have been six month project, with the track rebuild and the new traffic tunnels, could now go as long as eighteen months.

Incompetence, arrogance and probably apathy from the previous government of Campbell Newman (Steve Dickson and Tim Nichols) is now costing the industry severely and perhaps the racing administrators are in part accountable as well for not getting the deal signed and sealed before Eagle Farm was closed in the first place.

I am not privy to the full circumstances but I know the current outcome is beyond disappointing.

I fear, as usual, that there will be no recriminations or satisfactory explanations as to why this was allowed to happen when there were years to get the planning right.

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The recent big wet is causing all kinds of disruptions to the racing programs and the preparations of most horses.

There will now be a massive backlog of horses needing to race on tracks which are already under siege. It is extremely frustrating to all trainers and their staff and of course the owners as the bills still have to be paid whether we race or not.

It will be weeks before the tracks can recover from the current deluge and perhaps longer before the racing pattern gets back to what can be considered normal.

To give you an idea of how much rain we have had this year.

Average rainfall over the years to Apr 457.2mm.

Total to this day in 2014 324.6mm.

Total for 2015 to date 873.6mm.

That helps you understand just how wet it has been so I guess we just have to be patient and do the best we can and trainers have to find the suitable races on the right tracks as they come along.

It still doesn’t make it any the more palatable for the suffering owners and punters but we will do the best we can and it’s important that all in the industry understand the difficulties.

It is easy to just sit back and throw rocks and criticise but I think it is better to be part of the solution and not the problem.

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I have lost Buffering for the winter carnival through a training injury which I am still getting over and I recently had to put a nice filly down due to an injury so the whole process with Eagle Farm out of play is very challenging ... but we have to stay positive no matter how frustrating things are at times and do our best under the circumstances.

I guess, at the end of the day, it is important to remember where we are heading with the Eagle Farm track and that the difficulties we are experiencing now will be a memory when we have the best racing track in Australia and stables to match it!

Reminds me of a saying of an old driver of the tour buses I was on once. He told me, ‘of course I look at the glass half full. The only time I would look at it half empty is when I think about how good the first half tasted.’

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