Friday evening’s entertaining, albeit shortened, Hollywoodbets Greyville night racemeeting is scheduled to be the penultimate fixture run on the often maligned polytrack, before the all-weather circuit undergoes the most significant overhaul in its decade of service to KZN racing.
The Gold Circle promotional blurb is ‘night time is the right time’, and there is no question that with a buzz on course, a happy crowd enjoyed themselves in advance of the weekend, although winners were hard to come by on a card riddled with longshots – and then after the sixth race, the unscripted disruption to the Municipal power supply to the course torpedoed what was a great evening.
After a significant delay, and no sign of the power supply being restored, a decision was taken to abandon the remainder of the race meeting (Races 7 and 8).
Rachel Venniker and Carl Hewitson with Aspoestertjie – the first leg of the Hewitson deouble (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
Summerveld trainer Carl Hewitson was an early contributor to the testing conditions for favourites backers, saddling a 400-1 double, as he winds down in preparation for a new career challenge in Mauritius.
Aspoestertjie (Rachel Hewitson, 11-2) and Notable (Serino Moodley, 50-1) were the two Hewitson strikes.
Launched in 2014 to much fanfare as the answer to Mother Nature’s often unpredictable mood swings in the holiday province, the Hollywoodbets Greyville polytrack has enjoyed a love-hate relationship with a wide spectrum of stakeholders.
Against the backdrop of the acquisition of Gold Circle (Pty) Ltd by Hollywood Racing Enterprises (Pty) Ltd, which is still subject to final ratification by the KwaZulu-Natal Economic Regulatory Authority, but has already seen a new era of increased stakes, incentives, improved and simplified race programming, as well as operational and information add-ons, including weighing of horses and branded saddle-cloths in work, the biggest move to enhance the landscape of the new dawn will be the revitalization of the polytrack through a dual-phase overhaul which commences on 17 February.
Gold Circle Racing Executive Raf Sheik surveys the polytrack before it undergoes long overdue maintenance later this month (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
“During phase 1 the polytrack will be lifted, the base examined, and repairs carried out where necessary. We have set aside two weeks for this process,” explained Gold Circle Racing Executive Raf Sheik, who is on a committee tasked with ensuring an expeditious and seamless upgrade.
Sheik went on to say that in phase 2 a gel will be sprayed on the entire track.
This will apparently take up approximately six days and will be effected in March, dependant on the delivery of the materials.
“Once completed, we can look forward to three to four years of high quality and fair racing on a polytrack that will play an important role in ensuring that we have diversified and year round racing product for all of our stakeholders to enjoy,” concluded Sheik.
Night racing returns to Hollywoodbets Greyville on the polytrack on Friday 7 February for what will effectively be a farewell to the old surface. There probably won’t be too many tears in anticipation of better days ahead!
The racing programme naturally remains fluid and is subject to change.
