BROWNIE'S BLOG: THE EAGLE FARM RACING SURFACE IS IMPROVING BUT IT STILL HAS SOME WAY TO GO

By Damian Browne | Friday, September 23, 2016

Racing is at Eagle Farm tomorrow where the new racing surface remains a hot topic of conversation. In this edition of Brownie's Blog, the much respected and multiple Group 1 winning jockey Damian Browne gives his view of the current state of the going.

Just how well the new Eagle Farm track is progressing as a racing surface is a point that comes back into focus each time a meeting is scheduled to take place there.

It will soon be four months since its opening on Stradbroke day and there is no doubt the track is improving. To some degree its rate of progress will be just a ‘time’ thing and there will always be external factors ... the weather, for one, hasn’t helped it a lot and its early, heavy workload in terms of number of races and runners in those first meetings was not ideal for a new track.

It is still fairly ‘shifty’ though.

I don’t think it has consolidated as quickly as we all had hoped ... which means some horses aren’t comfortable on it. Although there haven’t been that many meetings at Eagle Farm yet, I think it has already been established that certain horses do well there ... and look set to continue to do so.

By the same token I think horses that aren’t running well there will continue to not run well at this time.

It’s become quite evident already that there have been a number of horses that were expected to perform well there who haven’t done so.

I think when horses are moving around like that they can lose confidence and therefore some won’t stretch out like they normally would.

That is one explanation ... and then of course that situation is compounded for punters when that horse gets on to a more comfortable track next time and turns around its form.

It’s a difficult one because we are all still trying to work out the nature of the new track, but I do know that you can certainly feel the horses moving around a lot more than they should be when it becomes rain affected which is unfortunate at this stage.

As I have indicated though, it would be fair to say that it can be expected that the track will improve further over time.

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The camber at Eagle Farm has brought a specific change to the makeup of the track as opposed to the old version.

The camber helps you if you are travelling three or four wide. You can run off the camber and get up a bit of momentum.

It doesn’t negate barrier draws though, as some have suggested.

Barrier draws have always played an important part at Doomben as we know and you could always get away with a lot more at Eagle Farm ... even more so with the camber now. I don’t think travelling three or four wide is as big a disadvantage as it used to be because of the camber.

You certainly are not going to aim to be three or four wide but the camber does help you so it is not the end of the world if you are caught out there.

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Criticism of sorts has been levelled at the jockey’s mindset in general from some quarters on the basis of the belief that riders have been unfairly prejudging the track on race-days and predetermining strategies ... such as getting off the inside from the very first race.

As a rider you take every day as it comes. Obviously we’d all like to be racing close to the fence but I think, whenever we have come off the fence, it has been shown that horses that have gone back to the inside and looked like they were going to make good ground ... over the last 100m they have seemed to battle.

I think that has become quite evident at Eagle Farm at this time so I would suggest the jockeys decisions have more to do with practical considerations on any given day rather than any mindset that is set in stone.

You are there to win the race and you go where you think the ground gives you the best chance of doing so. You want to give your horse the best opportunity so you want to be on the best part of the track if possible.

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In closing, for all of Buff’s supporters who have asked ... we were once again really happy with Buffering’s work in between races at Doomben on Wednesday.

He didn’t have the blinkers on and, with the track being quite rain affected on the day ... he is not as adept on rain affected going as he is on good footing ... all in all, I was very happy with the way he felt and the way he worked.

To me, he is exactly where you would want him to be at this stage of the preparation and I couldn’t be happier.

I think he is on target for next week!

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