Rainfall hits pause on FNQ turf club’s plans
Innisfail Turf Club are desperate for their track upgrades after losing their eighth race meeting in two years.
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Innisfail Turf Club are desperate for their track upgrades after losing their eighth race meeting in two years.
Saturday’s non-Tab race meeting scheduled for Innisfail has been moved to Atherton Turf Club at Morrow Park.
Innisfail’s Pease Park has had five meetings abandoned or transferred to other tracks so far in 2020, to go with the three that could not be run because of rain and the state of the track last year.
Upgrades and redevelopment works to the Cassowary Coast track are set to start in October and club president Mark Spagnolo says they cannot come quickly enough.
“We had 400-odd millimetres of rain about a month ago and it just has not dried out, the water table must be so high,” Spagnolo said.
“It is very soft and wet, and we had danger of rain all week and into the weekend. It is going to be too wet.
“Our track works later in the year will help alleviate this happening in the future.
“They will not do all the track but they will do some of it.”
In June 2019, the Cassowary Coast-based club received almost $500,000 as part of the State Government’s Country Racing Support Package to upgrade the reverse camber from the 800m up the straight and replace the running rail.
The works will start after the Innisfail Cup meeting in the middle of October.
Just last month Innisfail could not run one of their meetings, which was also transferred up to Tolga.
Rainfall has been the main issue for Innisfail’s lost meetings, but one was abandoned due to extreme heat earlier this year.
“The Innisfail race meeting was previously postponed from Saturday 13 June due to weather,” Racing Queensland said in a statement late on Monday.
“Innisfail’s Pease Park racecourse has recorded over 120mm of rainfall this month and with showers forecast for every day this week, the decision to reschedule has been taken.
Due to the change in venue, there are minor amendments to races distances: Class B Hcp 1400m (was 1500m) and Class B Hcp 1000m (was 900m).”
Nominations for the Atherton race meeting close at 11.00am on Tuesday.
RQ said nominations already lodged for the Innisfail meeting will stand and those not wanting to start at Atherton will have to withdraw their nomination with Racing Australia.
Originally published as Rainfall hits pause on FNQ turf club’s plans