THE efforts made by everyone concerned on Thursday, January 26 to compete at the Goondiwindi Race Club Australia Day meeting were nothing short of remarkable.
One can only feel for a club like Kilcoy who for the second year in a row has lost their major date.
Firstly, the Club and committee need to be congratulated on the very fact that the club raced at all. An enormous amount of work has been completed at Gunsynd Park and in the last two years, the club would have lost four meetings had it not been for the Turf Track initiative.
It has not only saved the day but it has turned out to be one of the better wet-weather country tracks racing at the moment.
After a shaky start, the plaudits that now arrive from visiting trainers, jockeys and supporters are gratifying to the club.
Then there are the jockeys who turn up to ride the horses. Some could not make it due to flooded roadways like Terry Treichel.
Terry is now based at Port Macquarie and travelled all the roads of northern NSW to get to Goondiwindi only to be blocked south of Glen Innes.
Other riders like Rikki Jamieson, who is an apprentice on the Gold Coast and is commencing a promising career travelled from the Coast and returned that night to be a part of the meeting. Rikki was lucky enough to ride a double.
Then the trainers, like Shane Burns who was successful in the Inglewood Cup. Shane is domiciled in Dalby and the Dalby to St George road was cut due to flood water.
No real problem, head to Toowoomba first and come around the long way. Like Rikki Jamieson, Shane was successful in the Inglewood Cup but many other trainers travelled miles as well and weren’t so lucky.
With the introduction of The Inglewood Cup to the Goondiwindi program, there were all the Inglewood supporters and sponsors, waiting until Thursday morning, wondering if their first Inglewood Cup for many years would actually come to fruition.
So really, it was a big effort to stage the meeting at all.
The first race was the Agents & Construction Maiden Plate and the Mackay owned - Ken Waller trained Pops Choice won at $6. Pops Choice had reasonable form around the district and finished too strong to give the Waller and Brooke Richardson combination the first leg of a winning Double.
A very popular win in the second, the Class 3 went to Temple Court trained by Daryl Gollan and ridden by Nathan Evans.
This was the only result for the male jockeys on the program.
Temple Court had a wing of supporters and started at $5 which did not help the local bookies at all. Temple Court had failed badly on the cushion track at his last start and the bus load of supporters from the Coast and Inglewood enjoyed the post-race celebrations.
The third was the first running of the Inglewood Cup which was sponsored by the Inglewood Chamber of Commerce members.
The Inglewood Community rallied behind the proposal as Inglewood has some very strong ties to racing with the Killen family and others all born in the town.
Shane Burns saddled up Frisco Lights who went round a very short price favourite in the Inglewood Cup.
Frisco Lights just held on from Shale Shaker who tried hard to peg back the eventual winner. This gave Rikki Jamieson the first leg of her race-to- race double. Frisco Lights started at $1.60.
Simon Foster and Rocksalt travelled all the way for the Gold Coast to Goondiwindi to take out the Combined Industrial Sector Class B.
Rocksalt gave bookies some relief when he saluted at $7 to hold a determined effort by Give me Room.
The last saw the locally owned first-starter Sandy View demolish a small but handy field in the Combined Hoteliers Maiden. Sandy View is trained by former Group One winning jockey Ken Waller and this also gave the sire Frisco View a performance double. Sandy View was basically unwanted in the betting with Dwan a very short price favourite running second.
And so another great day for racing at Gunsynd Park.
The committee has tried hard to improve the facilities at Gunsynd Park and they are now reaping rewards. All that is now required is for some of these Country Clubs be granted TAB status when not racing in opposition to the Saturday mainstream races. The model works exceptionally well in NSW with most clubs being granted at least one Sunday or off Saturday meeting on the TAB. There is absolutely no reason why this could not and should not happen with strategic Clubs in Queensland either.
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