Saturday Track Reports October 24 - Five Metro Meetings

The track's in great condition, currently rated Good 4 for Friday morning. It's been quite a warm week for us this time of year, with 30-degree temperatures over the last few days, so we've put on around 9 or 10mm of irrigation each night to keep it in that Good 4 range for tomorrow.

We've certainly had to monitor it carefully, knowing we're going to run Derby Day in the True position as well, making sure we try to prepare a Good 4 to Good 3 track. That'll enable the track to pull up well enough to race well on Derby Day.

Knowing that we'd be hosting the Cox Plate, I tried a couple of little things during last year's carnival to bring the track on and ensure we were able to host five days, and they worked well. We'll replicate that this year and make sure we can get the track up for each meeting.

We've put on about 60mm for the week and we'll probably put on another 7 or 8mm tonight to keep it in the Good 4 range. Fortunately, we've worked out that we can run the 2040m Cox Plate start here at Flemington, so the barriers will push 40 metres back from the 2000m start.

Conditions tomorrow are still a little uncertain — patchy showers, a chance of an isolated thunderstorm, a top of 22 degrees and light south-southeasterly winds. Hopefully we don't get any rain during the day and it can be a pleasant day on course.

I'm thankful for the team. They've done a great job, especially off the back of Turnbull Stakes Day, which was a really wet track. We had a lot of rain within 48 hours of that meeting and on race-day morning, so for the track to have been repaired as quickly and as well as it has is full credit to them.

Track rating: Good 4. Grass coverage: Good.

Irrigation: 3mm last 24 hours and 49mm last seven days. A further 6mm was being applied during the walk, with more planned to hold the Good 4.

Rainfall: Nil last 24 hours and last seven days.

Rail: True — moving back in from the last meeting to provide better ground.

Verdict: The track was rated Good 4 with good grass coverage. The forecast at the time indicated 5–20mm of rain Saturday, so the eventual amount will determine the race-day rating.

Currently a Good 4. We've had 1.3mm of rain overnight to give us 21.1mm for the week. We're going to push the rail out to the six-metre position just to get over a bit of marking from last week. The track pulled through last week's racing meeting very well.

A couple of millimetres of rain today, lingering around tomorrow to 1–2mm, and a fine day on Saturday around 26 degrees. Winds from the northeast. The track will be in the Good 4 range for sure.