ONE-EYED SYDNEY STORM SNIPING CAME AS NO SURPISE
IT came as no surprise that some Sydney racing commentators were keen to ‘bag’ Victorian stewards for proceeding with the Newmarket in the eye of the big storm that battered Flemington on Saturday.
Those same critics turn a blind eye to what happens in Sydney on a regular basis that irks most punters, like the high profile galloper that ran a close fourth recently, should have bolted in, but did not attract even a mention from stewards. There are plenty of punters Austraia-wide wishing RVL chief steward, Terry Bailey, was running the show in Sydney.
Here’s how Matt Stewart from Australia’s leading racing paper, the Melbourne Herald Sun, looked back on the storm that forced an early curtain call for Super Saturday:
‘DID stewards get lucky in deciding to run the gauntlet with Saturday's Newmarket Handicap at Flemington?
Sydney commentator Ron Dufficy said yesterday that in Sydney they would have pulled up stumps as soon as the first bolt of lightning cracked over the racecourse.
A couple of jockeys who rode in the race said they were surprised it proceeded, despite darkening skies, bolts of lightning and increasingly, and ominously, rumbling skies as the field assembled behind the gates.
Wanted's jockey Luke Nolen said afterwards he was happy to plough on - not surprising, given he won the race - but also observed that horses, with their rod-conducting metal shoes, were "a bit of a magnet" in electrical storms.
Chief steward Terry Bailey yesterday praised the accuracy of the time frame given to his panel by the weather bureau in the minutes before the race.
Bailey said he was assured the storm was close, but not close enough to illuminate the Newmarket as a potentially disastrous light and noise show when the gates opened.
It seems the storm was close enough for the bureau to predict its arrival virtually to the minute.
Bailey, of course, had to make a quick and considered decision.
Fifteen minutes before the race, there was barely a hint of anything brewing.
It was hot and sticky and the clouds were not threatening.
The dark, low stuff only rolled in as the field trotted to the gates. Within six or seven minutes the horses would have been walking back to their stalls via the tunnel.
Those critical of Bailey's decision might have a point, but they might also be wise only in retrospect.
Besides, the fact is the race was run and won and no one was electrocuted.
Next time, given the calamity that occurred on Saturday, Bailey might opt to pull the plug at the first hint of a growling black cloud.
Given this storm was a once-in-a-career phenomenon, he might never have to worry.’
STORY COURTESY OF MATT STEWART AND HERALD SUN, MELBOURNE
