Derby Day grounded as the Eagle soars
Melbourne is slowly emerging from COVID-19 lockdown, but it won’t be in time for what is usually one of the city’s biggest party days of the year.
Melbourne is slowly emerging from COVID-19 lockdown, but it won’t be in time for what is usually one of the city’s biggest party days of the year.
There’s more fun to be had in Sydney on Saturday instead, where the upstart $7.5m Golden Eagle horse race looks to take the attention from Derby Day down south at Flemington.
The Victoria Derby meet at Flemington usually marks the beginning of a festival that continues on Tuesday with the Melbourne Cup and then more big meets with Oaks Day two days later and Stakes Day on the Saturday. The week-long celebrations barely pause.
Derby Day is the biggest day of them all. Think of the Bird Cage on Flemington’s straight, where billionaires, A-listers, footy players and assorted glammed-up hangers-on run amok.
Or the mounting yard, the best place to be before a major race.
Trainers, jockeys, owners. They’re all usually there, whispering secretively among each other.
Instead, Rosehill is where the people will be this year. All 6047, of them. Which is enough for about 25 per cent capacity and good going during COVID-19.
It is there where there will be pop-up bars, food trucks, the Spring Fashion Stakes and a Fabric of Multicultural Australia fashion runway show.
In Melbourne, Fashions on the Field will have to be Fashions in your Front Yard.
Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys is more conciliatory, though. “The whole intention of having feature races in Spring (in Sydney) is to compliment the Melbourne program and shine a light on thoroughbred racing,” he tells The Australian.
Mr V’landys says new races like the Golden Eagle have helped boost previously “dilapidated” race sizes. The number of runners is improving, and so are the revenues. “We believe that the Golden Eagle will now become the second-highest (betting) turnover race in NSW, behind only the Everest,” he says.
Star trainer Chris Waller will be at Rosehill on Saturday, where he has the favourite in Funstar. Last year, Waller started the Saturday at Flemington in the early morning for trackwork, flew to Sydney for the first ever Golden Eagle and flew back that night to prepare for the Melbourne Cup.
That won’t be happening this year. Waller said this week that he thought it important to be at Rosehill as it is his home track, and that it was necessary to support the extended Sydney spring carnival. “The Golden Eagle is a unique race and it has attracted some very good horses,” he said.
Funstar is at the top of the contenders, though she has drawn the widest barrier in 22, which means it will take a good ride from its star jockey Tommy Berry for the mare to emerge victorious.
Meanwhile, the Victoria Racing Club will press ahead with its best day of the year — there are four Group One races on Saturday — in what will be a made-for-TV spectacular, given the decision this week by the state government not to allow small groups of horse owners onto the course.
VRC chair Amanda Elliott, who has Saturday’s first race named for her, said in response: “To say we are extremely disappointed is an understatement.”
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