Just not HAPPY !
Trainer Rob Heathcote angry over axed race at midweek Doomben meeting
by: Nathan Exelby
From: The Courier-Mail
PREMIER trainer Rob Heathcote has fired a broadside at Racing Queensland after the abandonment of a maiden race means Brisbane will host yet another six-race metropolitan midweek meeting tomorrow. This is another example of how the Metropolitan status continues to be eroded by this racing administration
Heathcote was angered when his runner Vacallo was left without a race to run in on a midweek metro card that for the second week in a row has just six races.
"They (RQ) are running racing as if the money is coming out of their own pocket," he said. “We should be encouraging connections to race on our premier tracks, not turning them away”!
"It's things like this that are driving owners and trainers out of the state."
Vacallo had been nominated for two races and accepted for the C,G&E Maiden (1110m), which originally had 12 nominations. When he was initially informed the 1110 mdn was to be scratched,
he immediately rang Racing Queensland and was told that final fields had not been declared so please now include Vacallo into the 3 year old maiden.
They told me they would get back to me but half an hour later fields came out and the horse wasn't in there.
"Yet again we have a metropolitan midweek meeting with only six races. We weren't allowed to go into the three-year-old race, even though I was told the final fields hadn't been declared when I made the inquiry. The fact the other race doesn't have a capacity field makes it even more frustrating and quite simply wrong ! We have done nothing wrong and the horse should have been permitted to race.
"A little bit of PR would have gone a long way at a time when there seems to be a fair bit of negativity come out of Deagon. It's bitterly disappointing and I am embarrassed for our owners and the way our metropolitan racing is heading."
RQ director of product development, Paul Brennan, said rules prohibited accepting the horse as a late entrant.
"All the trainers would have got a text to say the race had been abandoned. Unfortunately we can't send that until after the deadline has expired," Brennan said, before adding trainers have a mechanism to "put a note" with their nomination to say they would like to run in another race in the event of a race being abandoned or the horse being balloted.
"To be fair, I'm disappointed my guys didn't pick that up, but I'm also disappointed the trainers never used their powers within RISA to put in that note," he said. That is being very pedantic and RQ is hiding behind the fact that yet another Racing office error was made to the detriment of racing connections!
Racing Queensland made the decision to reduce midweek meetings to seven races two seasons back and Brennan said the abandonment was unfortunate, but commercial reality.
"The board has to take a commercial stance on this and whether or not the return on that prize money is worthwhile," he said.
