By David Gilbert
FOLLOWING a break of more than 20 months, racing is set to resume at Glenburnie next Wednesday, February 23.
Six official trials were conducted last Friday and, to the satisfaction of all concerned, the course proper received the much awaited tick of approval from jockeys and racing officials.
In attendance from Adelaide were Racing SA Chief Operations Officer Vaughn Lynch and chairman of stewards Johann Petzer.
The six jockeys to put the gallopers to the test were locals Kaye Walters and Geoff O’Loughlin along with four from Adelaide (Anna Jordsjo, Emily Finnegan, Alice Lindsay and Eran Boyd).
“It’s onwards and upwards for racing to proceed next Wednesday at Mount Gambier,” Lynch told The Border Watch.
“The track was presented perfectly, the jockeys reported a good coverage of grass and the horses hardly marked it.”
Mount Gambier racing club CEO Brett Watson was pleased with the return.
“By the time we race next Wednesday, horses will have worked on the course proper on three different occasions,” he said.
“We are looking forward to welcoming everybody back to the races next Wednesday and we have already taken several luncheon bookings.”
If Mount Gambier Racing Club officials are expecting the public to swarm back to Glenburnie after the prolonged absence, then they may be in for a shock.
Here’s hoping they do arrive in droves as the facilities at Glenburnie for the members and public are second to none for a rural racecourse.
However, crowds so far this season at meetings in the Limestone Coast, with the odd exception, have been poor.
Seven races have been programmed, including the Greg Richardson Memorial in honour of the former committeeman and keen racing identity.
For those visitors or locals who may have forgotten, Glenburnie racecourse is that vast expanse of land on the south western corner of the intersection of the Princes and Glenelg highways, some eight kilometres east of the city.
LOOKING THE GOODS
TATIARA trainer Darryl Dodson has always had the happy knack of producing a horse every now and again that has been good enough to win in the city.
Last racing season Dodson won four metropolitan races, two of them with Just Chipping Away.
He now has a galloper who is showing enormous promise to suggest he may be the best galloper Dodson has had in his stable since Texan Warney.
Young Jimmy is doing everything right at present and now boasts the excellent record of four wins and a third from five starts.
Following a debut third at Oakbank last December, Young Jimmy has chalked up four successive wins and is going through his classes with aplomb.
A maiden win at Naracoorte over Christmas was followed by two wins at Penola in January in BM 58 and BM 64 grade.
The six-year-old gelding faced easily his biggest test last Saturday in Adelaide in BM 68 company over 1200 metres.
An outside barrier (12) and a significant betting drift ($10-$15) meant nothing as Young Jimmy jumped brilliantly for apprentice Ben Price and prevailed in a blanket finish by a long head to give Price the second leg of a winning double.
“We will wait a week and see how his humour is,” the quietly spoken Dodson said in relation to Young Jimmy’s immediate racing future
WINNERS KEEP COMING
SINCE Christmas, the winners have been rolling in at regular intervals for Glenburnie co-trainers Bob and Kane Post.
In that period the Posts have been in the winner’s stall on seven occasions, four of those in country Victoria.
Their latest success was at Werribee last Sunday when the consistent performer Melissa Kate ($7.50) finally broke through to win her second race at start number 25.
Two recent thirds at Warrnambool and Donald showed Melissa Kate (named after Wayne Walters’ two daughters) was close to another victory.
Not that the win was achieved easily at Werribee as the five-year-old mare only won by a nose for jockey Kate Walters.
That also continued the winning spree for Walters who has won eight races since Christmas, six of them for the Post stable.
HALIDON NO LONGER A RACING VENUE
AS it has turned out, last year’s annual race meeting in September at Halidon for the Mindarie-Halidon Racing Club was the last time – according to Racing SA – the club will race at the track in the scrub between Tailem Bend and Loxton.
In its wisdom, Racing SA opted to close Halidon as a venue, but there was a backlash against the decision from most in the racing industry.
The decision was reviewed by the board of Racing SA last month and they have stood by their original decision to close the track.
The Mindarie-Halidon Racing Club has been offered the opportunity to stage its meeting at Murray Bridge, 100 kilometres away.
In my opinion it is a howler of a decision by Racing SA and a nail in the coffin of country racing in SA to cease racing at Halidon.
It was one of the truly great country race meetings in South Australia, if not Australia, as I witnessed last year when crowd capacity was reached (how often do you see that these days?) and people were turned away.
A dejected Mindarie-Halidon racing secretary Krystina Durdin said the club had received a letter from Racing SA advising of the latest decision but that no official reasons were outlined as to why the track was closed.
LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG
IT has been a much quieter start for the local racing season for Naracoorte trainer Sue Murphy and, as we enter the second half of the season, Murphy sits in fifth spot on the premiership ladder with seven wins but only two wins behind the leader Darryl Dodson.
Murphy bounced back into winning form with a double on Naracoorte cup day last Sunday week and Wimmera racing journalist Josh Miller let the cat out of the bag for punters to back one of her winners, Hi Smokey.
Murphy slipped over the border to the Horsham jump outs and Hi Smokey caught the eye with an all-the-way win, easily beating proven Melbourne gallopers Flying Mascot and Lunar Fox.
In his Winning Post column prior to the Naracoorte Cup, Miller wrote Hi Smokey ran a second quicker than any other winner that morning and went on to mention Hi Smokey was going to run and be hard to beat at Naracoorte.
Punters latched on to the information and Hi Smokey was backed from $10 into $3.70 favourite, and ran his rivals off their legs to win by nearly three lengths.
HAD HER SUPPORTERS CHEERING
SOME good bets were won on the Steve Fennell trained Miss Peggy O’Neill at Ararat trots on Sunday afternoon in the NR 52-56 pace.
The five-year-old mare started the $3 favourite, backed in from $4.40 and led all the way to beat fellow local Yappas Courage by half a neck to make it three wins from her past five starts.
Thankfully, the final Tuesday night meeting of the season for local harness racing is next Tuesday, February 22 before returning to mainly Friday night fixtures.
