Big wet wreaks havoc with race program
The torrential storms which have battered large parts of New South Wales over the past few days and caused racing officials to make the unprecedented decision to shift Saturday’s Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) card back by a week, showed no signs of abating yesterday as Australian racing experienced a total wash out.
More than 18,000 people across the state have now been evacuated due to the ‘big wet’ which has led to over 850 rescues and around 9,500 requests for help following the worst floods in more than a decade.
Some areas have been hit by more than one metre of rainfall as hundreds of homes have been flooded while racecourses and stud farms have also been left to count the cost of the water damage.
Tracks, trainers, sales houses and farms all hit social media to document the carnage. Among the worst hit areas is Hawkesbury, where tomorrow’s meeting has fallen foul of the weather after almost 300 millimetres of rain hit the track this week, leading racecourse ceo Ken Rutherford to say “I have never seen anything like it.”
Dramatic footage also appeared on social media of horses being rescued from the floods at Hawkesbury, while further afield trainer and pre-trainer Kacy Fogden posted a film of water gushing through Aquis Farm in Canungra, Queensland.
Kempsey trainer Barry Ratcliff spoke of his frustration at the situation, when speaking to Andrew Bensley on SENTrack. “The track is closed indefinite. We can’t even get them out of the stables at the moment there is so much rain and so much debris around the place. It’s pretty sad and you don’t like to see the poor devils locked in their boxes. We just have to grin and bear it.
“I have nominated everywhere but we can’t accept as we can’t get out of town. It makes you cry just to watch the poor horses doing nothing but there is nothing you can do about it.
“About 30 years ago we had a big flood but I think this one is a bit bigger, it just won’t stop raining. It is a shame to see the good horses in their boxes. We just can’t do anything with them.”
Prime minister Scott Morrison said that Western Sydney is now the area of “greatest concern” with 10 million people under warnings across every state and territory except Western Australia.
And, although the forecast is for the rain to start to ease today, the Bureau of Meteorology has warned the situation is “far from over” with two major weather systems forecast to collide as the low pressure system that has been inundating the NSW coast for days is met by another weather system inland that is moving east.
There was no racing across Australia yesterday after Benalla joined Gosford and Queensland’s fixture at Beaudesert in a mounting list of cancellations which had already seen Port Macquarie and Muswellbrook lose their programmed cards, in addition to the Rosehill postponement.
The meeting at Benalla was abandoned after an inspection by stewards found surface water on parts of the track following overnight rain. Gosford’s meeting was postponed on Monday afternoon after the track had been hit by more than 350 millimetres of rain in the past week.
Beaudesert was abandoned the same day after 92 millimetres of rain had fallen in the 36 hours before the meeting was cancelled. The card has been rescheduled for April 1.
In Queensland, the meeting scheduled to take place at Ipswich today will now be staged on Friday, while the Warwick Friday card has now been moved to next Tuesday.
Today’s meeting scheduled for Grafton, on the NSW north coast, was also called off yesterday following an inspection of the racecourse. Officials deemed the track to be unsuitable for racing and called a halt to the card after surface water was found on the course.
Warwick Farm’s meeting for today had already been switched to tomorrow at Randwick’s Kensington track, where underfoot conditions were described as a Heavy 10 yesterday following 287 millimetres of rain in the last week.
The going at Rosehill, where the rearranged Slipper meeting is scheduled to take place on Saturday, was yesterday described as Heavy 9 after another 23 millimetres of rain made it a total of 117 millimetres for the week.