
Greyville is back on track
In a press release dated 23 April 2013, Gold Circle confirmed that Greyville has the thumbs-up for tomorrow’s race meeting after 12 horses were put through their paces in trial gallops today.
The five jockeys involved were Bernard Fayd’Herbe, Sean Cormack, Alec Forbes, MJ Byleveld and Keagan de Melo and some good horses took part, including In The Fast Lane and Royal Zulu Warrior. The KwaZulu-Natal jockeys involved commented on the improvement from the last meeting, which was abandoned after one race due to a jockeys protest.
One of the main areas of concern during that meeting was the discoloured grass over the drainage systems that were laid every 80 metres. However, the only one that was of concern to the jockeys today was the one at the 100m mark as some of the horses noticed it. Track Manager Kurt Grunewald said this patch would be massaged and grass plugs knitted in before the meeting. The jockeys commented on the course being a lot more forgiving than it was during the last meeting.
Further good news was that the horses went over the new polytrack pull up area without hesitation. Cormack said, “A lot of work has been done and there is massive improvement from the abandoned meeting.”
An interested spectator was the well known American owner and breeder Barry Irwin, who is here for the National Yearling Sales before flying to the UK to watch his filly Euro Charline running in the 1000 Guineas.