Matt Stewart writes Saturday’s postponement of Day One of The Championships is devastating for the event

THE postponement of Day One of The Championships is devastating for the event, writes Matt Stewart.

Randwick Races on Doncaster Day cancelled due to terrible weather.

THE jittery residents of Tornado Alley would empathise with the hamstrung organisers of The Championships.

Between March and June every year bunkered-down farmers and townsfolk from Kansas to Nebraska simply wait for the tornadoes to spin furiously their way, wrecking everything in their path.

You can’t set your clocks to the tornadoes but there is a season, just as there is a wet season in Sydney that not only can be near guaranteed around Easter but seems wetter every year.

The Championships finds itself in an impossible bind. A dark cloud hangs over it.

Houses, tractors and livestock weren’t sucked into the heavens at Randwick on Saturday, but the postponement of Day One until today has been devastating.

NSW racing, which was so cash strapped it required a state government kick-in to sustain The Championships, lost an estimated $10 million in betting turnover.

A crowd of 25,000 or more might have rocked up on Saturday. It’s fortunate in some way that today is a public holiday, but the Australian Turf Club can expect only a rain-sodden trickle through the gates.

It will resemble an “industry’’ day, a catch-up day; 10 races, the first at 11.25am.

It will be the same cast of star horses as Saturday but it won’t feel the same. Saturday is game day for racing. They stopped going to the races on public holidays a decade ago, as will be proved again at Oakbank today when a smaller crowd will attend the Great Eastern Steeplechase meeting than turned up for the lesser program on Saturday.

Horses that may have backed up from the Doncaster to Saturday’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes – such as Sacred Falls – now almost certainly won’t because a five-day back-up is far less appealing than a seven-day one, especially on a mud heap.

These are minor casualties compared to the ongoing burden of hosting Sydney’s biggest race meeting – once merely the Randwick autumn, now year two of the hugely ambitious Championships — in the guaranteed wettest week of the year.

There hasn’t been a Doncaster run on a dry track since Sunline won in 2002.

Imagine 13 straight Melbourne Cups run on a bog; that annual scene of thousands frolicking on the lawns replaced by mud, upturned tables and empty chairs as the wind and rain keep coming.

That’s what it is like almost every Easter at Randwick; all dressed up in its finery, the lawns a sea of marquees and outdoor settings but then misty emptiness because it won’t stop raining.

It’s a huge problem without a reasonable solution, although you wonder if the creation of a super-draining track (e.g. Flemington) should have been a far higher priority when the ATC was splashing $150 million on a grandstand that offers little more than a protected view of empty lawns.

Mud and rain work only as an occasional backdrop. If every Melbourne Cup had been like Van Der Hum’s we’d have become bored of it long ago. Once the hippies at Woodstock sobered up, they were just wet and miserable.

Like the resilient people of Kansas, the hamstrung people of The Championships really have just one option; bunker down, expect the worst and pray for the best.

Originally published as Matt Stewart writes Saturday’s postponement of Day One of The Championships is devastating for the event