QUIRINDI Jockey Club is preparing for what could be a mammoth day's racing on Sunday.
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The local club received a giant 181 nominations on Monday for the seven-race TAB meeting which could be lengthened to make eight races, QJC secretary Ted Wilkinson advised.
"We won't until the morning," Ted Wilkinson told The Leader on Wednesday.
"But we may be able to divide one of the races."
The flood of 181 nominations is due to recent meeting cancellations across the region and, while the Quirindi track was still rated a Heavy 8 on Wednesday, Wilkinson expects that to improve over the next few days with fine conditions and drying winds.
"We've just got a wet patch before and just after the finishing post but with a bit of wind and sun we'll be right," Wilkinson said.
It's a bit different in cold temperatures but worth it when you are riding winners.
- Apprentice jockey Jody Worley
He said the two main races on Sunday are a benchmark 60 1600m handicap and a benchmark 55 1200m handicap
Both drew big fields, 20 for the B60 and 25 for the B55.
Meanwhile, Armidale trainer Paul Grills produced a 50-1 surprise to all but him, when Phiyl's Prince rocketed to a dominant win at Gunnedah on Monday.
Grills had started the two-year-old just once for a debut 10th at Grafton on the first day of the Clarence River Jockey Club's Grafton Cup Carnival when the son of Drumbeats finished 10th to Zumikon.
Beaten 10 lengths, it resulted in his odds blowing to $55 on the NSW TAB in Monday's race.
"He's a very immature horse," Grills said. "But he didn't do anything wrong (at Grafton or in a Tamworth trial). He just wasn't up to them at that stage."
Phiyl's Prince had suffered from wet tracks as well.
"He hadn't been to the track because of the wet weather," Grills said.
Instead he worked him "at home up the hill".
Apprentice jockey Jodie Worley, based at Glen Innes with Paddy Cunningham, thinks there is plenty of improvement in the juvenile.
"He's a big baby," she said of what was her 100th race winner.
She has amassed those wins in just over two years of riding, starting in Grafton with Paddy Cunningham and then moving to Glen Innes and the Northern Tablelands with Cunningham.
"It's a bit different in cold temperatures but worth it when you are riding winners," she said.
