WHILE Mungindi Jockey Club’s $9500 Mungindi Cup meeting has been abandoned, Friday’s Muswellbrook Race Club Two Rivers Wines Sandy Hollow Sprint meeting is steaming ahead.
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Rather than steaming, more drying out as it moves from the Heavy 9 range to a hopeful Soft range come start time Friday.
General manager Duane Dowell was confident the Skellatar Park track would reach a Soft 6 by Friday with fine weather forecast today and tomorrow.
Muswellbrook trainer Stephen Gleeson has his stables adjacent to Skellatar Park and he too is confident the track will improve for Friday’s meeting.
“I was looking over the fence this morning (around 3am) and thought ‘gees it’s boggy, wet and soft’,” Gleeson said yesterday.
“They can only start 12 horses too so that’s going to be interesting.
“But I hope Duane is right and that it dries out a lot more and we go from the Heavy range into the Soft.”
He has two of the 15 nominations – Don’t Tease Me and Pippi’s Pride – in the feature race, the 1000m Sandy Hollow Sprint.
What weights they received yesterday afternoon were not a great factor in Gleeson’s calculations.
“Don’t Tease Me has got to start,” he said of the four-year-old gelding who is coming off a last-start eighth at Doomben beaten 11 lengths by Straturbo in the $100,000 Chief De Beers Listed Handicap (1050m).
“He should get topweight.”
He received 61kg, equal topweight with Paul Perry’s Quell while Pippi’s Pride received 59.5kg
Gleeson is hoping the track does improve so Don’t Tease Me can run in the Sandy Hollow Sprint as a forerunner to the $50,000 Kirby Handicap (1000m) at Grafton on Grafton Cup day (Thursday, July 14).
“He’s not real good in the Heavy but he will definitely start” Gleeson said.
“We decided not to go to Tamworth with him for what was a washed-out meeting last Saturday and do want to go to the Kirby with him.
“He’s got to run at Muswellbrook to have some sort of hit- out under pressure.”
While Don’t Tease Me can handle soft going, Pippi’s Pride is a duffer.
“He’s much worse than Don’t Tease Me.
“He’s been so hard to place this time because of all the wet weather.
“I haven’t been able to pinpoint anything with him.
“But if the track does improve here to a Soft he will go around too.
“We want to go to the South Grafton Cup with him (Sunday, July 10) but we’re on the back foot with that too now.
“We might have to throw him in at the deep end and go to the John Carlton ($25,000 quality handicap over 1200m) on Thursday week (July 7).
“He’s come back in well this time too – going really well, looking great.
“Just the 1000m (Sandy Hollow Sprint) is going to be too short for him and then it’s hard to have him rock-hard fit for the 1200m( John Carlton) or the South Grafton Cup (1600m).”
It’s a frustrating time for not only Gleeson but many of his HNWRA training confederates who are all in the same boat trying to ensure their horses are fit and firing for the rich July Carnival at Grafton.