STILL A LONG WAY TO GO BUT THE SUNSHINE COAST'S SYNTHETIC TRACK PROJECT IS UP AND RUNNING

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, October 21, 2020

The long proposed and now confirmed Sunshine Coast race-track project is still very much in the early planning stages, but at least now there is a clear path forward as John Miller, the Sunshine Coast Turf Club CEO explains.

“We have got funding from RIF (the racing infrastructure fund) … which comes from government from the racing infrastructure program … the club is also contributing some money to the project and there is a trust, which owns the assets of the racecourse, and they are contributing funds … so the finances have been put together three ways.

“We have reached the tender stage,” explained Miller, “and that closed last week. It has taken a long time to get to where we are, but we are off and running.

“We hope the evaluation of the tenders will take a couple of weeks.

“Once the tender process has been completed and we have made our selection, we will move forward from there but obviously, with synthetic tracks, the actual material isn’t just ready to go like that. Some of it might have to come from overseas.

“We will then have to work out as to what the timeframe is to get the material … and we hope that sometime in November we can come out and say we are going to start here and it is going to take this long.”

And just what work aspects, specifically, will be covered by the project?

“There are a few things that are going to happen,” answered Miller.

“We are going to take all the existing cushion track material off the track. The geo-fabric layer underneath … we are going to rip that off. What we plan to do is take the good material that is left from the cushion track and we are going to put it on to what we call the plough track, which is a little track we have inside the ‘B’ grass.

“There will be new irrigation for the new synthetic track. The idea behind the irrigation is just to control the temperature. If it is very hot you can put the irrigation on to cool the track temperature down. The cushion track never had that.

“Then they will put a new porous asphalt base over the drainage layer and then the new material goes on top.

“We are also going to upgrade the drainage on the ‘B’ grass, because obviously it is going to have a fair bit of work,” added Miller.

Everybody who experienced some of the angst surrounding the original implementation of the cushion track arrival in South East Queensland … and the subsequent ‘dislike’ by many the cushion track option … will be looking very closely at what happens here and Miller was very happy to put the two vastly different situations, more than ten years apart, in perspective.

“It is important to note that things now are a lot different to when those first cushion tracks went in,” said Miller, “and other positives might come into play.

“The hope is that the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast will end up with the same synthetic tracks … that is, what goes in here, will go in at the Gold Coast. That is the vision.

“If that were the case, then you would have five hundred horses or six hundred horses working on a synthetic track at the Gold Coast and four hundred horses working on the same type of synthetic track at the Sunshine Coast, so they will all be used to it … and, who knows, in a couple of years time one of Brisbane’s training tracks might get one too.

“That would mean that a big pool of horses could get used to the synthetic track. That was one of the big problems with the cushion.

“Another thing is, while grass track racing is always going to be the number one, we will plan have some designated race meetings on the synthetic … so it won’t be just when its wet that we’ll go over there.

“We might say, ok, in Autumn and Spring there might be a few weeks where we will run a series of synthetic track races.

“I know some people will still have concerns about that but, as you see down south, they are running on synthetic surfaces regularly enough without any problem. That is because they are just so much more advanced than when that first Cushion track went in.

“It is just a totally different track nowadays, both in makeup and in lifespan, that is as long as you are doing regular maintenance on it. It is a bit like owning a car and getting it serviced regularly and we will have all of those systems in place to ensure that happens when we start operating.

“If people who have had concerns in the past keep an open mind moving forward, I think we will be able to win their confidence back regarding synthetic racing surfaces.

“It’s a different time now,” concluded Miller.

John Miller