KILCOY MEETING LASTS JUST TWO RACES. FURTHER WEATHER CONCERNS MOVING INTO THE WEEKEND

By Graham Potter | Thursday, July 1, 2021

After already losing the Murwillumbah meeting in Northern New South Wales earlier in the day, the Kilcoy meeting in Queensland lasted just two races before being called off due to concerns about the track.

The meeting officially started off on a track with a soft 6 track rating, but that was quickly reassessed to a heavy 8 (retrospective) after the running of the first race. A heavy shower between the scheduled times of races one and two added a further factor into the ‘concern’ equation prompting stewards to put racing on hold while stewards and a couple of senior riders went out for a track inspection.

After a lengthy deliberation stewards and jockeys decided to continue the meeting, but they said they would be monitoring the situation on a race-by-race basis and it was not long after the second race that the battle was lost and the meeting was abandoned.

For trainers Les Kelly and Michael Nolan at least, travelling Gogol and Puckish respectively to Kilcoy turned out to be a worthwhile exercise.

Gogol, the former Waterhouse / Bott trained runner … lightly raced with only seven previous starts to his name … had not been seen in race action for just over fourteen months so it was a good training effort by Kelly to have him forward enough to be able to work around well from a wide draw and to grind out a first career win by half-a-length from the faster finishing Dream Entity in the first race.

Gogol, who started fourth favourite at $4 in an open betting race, was ridden by Girish Goomany.

For his part, Puckish (Jimmy Orman) was making it back-to-back wins for the Nolan stable when he took out the second race. He made light of his task once he settled into a rhythm, leaving the bulk of his opposition, with the exception of the game second placed Powers Lookout, chasing shadows in the home straight. The third placed Samhain finished more than six lengths back.

Tomorrow racing in Queensland is at Ipswich where ten races are due to be contested.

Racing participants will be watching the weather very closely though as fairly heavy rainfall is predicted for South-East Queensland over the coming days which could well have an adverse impact on all of the weekend’s meetings.