Leading trainer Wayne Hawkes is growing increasingly frustrated with the state of racetracks in New South Wales.
Yet again we woke on Saturday morning to news that Randwick’s 10-race Civic Stakes card was called off due to the track being unsuitable for racing leaving punters frustrated.
Hawkes, who had runners set to compete on the weekend, says improving tracks should be at the top of Racing NSW’s priority list.
“I don’t know how many times you just keep saying it,” Hawkes told SENTrack.
“What have they lost, three or four meetings now? Remember this, we’re only at the end of June, we still have July and August to go.
“We’re not even one third of the way through winter, we need to build more tracks like Newcastle because Randwick just doesn’t happen.
“The problem is is that the tracks aren’t good enough in wet weather. Canterbury used to be an amazing wet track but it’s not anymore and if you spit on the ground at Warwick Farm and it’s no good.”
Offering a solution, Hawkes says they must replicate the work they did on Newcastle’s surface starting with Kembla Grange and then Warwick Farm.
“There’s only one solution to this, go and replicate what they did at Newcastle, I would start at Kembla Grange because if you take Warwick Farm aside and do it first Kembla Grange isn’t good enough to take a stack more meetings,” Hawkes added.
“Go and do Kembla Grange first and then both Kembla Grange and Newcastle are two magnificent tracks.
“One of my great bugbears in Sydney racing is that they run at little tight tracks like Gosford and Wyong that are B-Graders and the beautiful big tracks that are Newcastle and Kembla Grange and those meetings are on a Saturday we’re you’ve got the lesser likes running and even though we have runners there we don’t support the Saturday bush like we probably should.
“We need to be working on this because we’re an outdoor sport and I don’t know how many times I’ve said it but it kept happening on Saturday.
“Ipswich was the main race day up in Queensland on Saturday and if Flemington didn’t gobble up all the dollars there’d be something to talk about because Flemington was the only show on Saturday.”
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