MRC "got it wrong" with Caulfield track

Thursday 16 January 2014, 5:07pm

Melbourne Racing Club's chief executive has admitted they "got it wrong" with the track surface presented at Caulfield on Wednesday.

The eight-race card was conducted with the rail out 14 metres in hot conditions and jockeys steered their mounts well off the inside section and towards the outside rail in the straight with the surface firmer out wide.

"It was disappointing," the MRC's chief executive Brodie Arnhold told RSN radio in Melbourne.

"Our responsibility is to produce a fair, safe surface to give everyone the opportunity to win and that wasn't the case yesterday.

"So we've stuck our hand up and said we didn't get this one right and we apologise to the people involved, from punters to owners to trainers and to the stewards.

"We got it wrong. And we're working very hard on making sure it doesn't happen again."

The meeting is usually conducted at Sandown and Arnhold said Caulfield didn't usually race that much at this time of year but had a couple of extra meetings with Sandown undergoing a renovation.

The hot weather also made it "a more complex task" in preparing the track but he said there still could have been solutions such as verti draining the outside section where the surface does get compact and hard, and also wasn't receiving as much irrigation as the inside because of the wind direction.

He said they should have taken the outside two to three metres "out of play".

"We should have had a slightly smaller surface but certainly one where the jockeys weren't trying to go to the outside fence which is not what we want to see," he said.

The rail placement was wide out on Wednesday because feature racing is just around the corner with five meetings in the next six weeks.

The rail will be back at the three metre position for the meeting on Saturday week, which features the Blue Diamond Previews.

The Caulfield track, which is 10-years-old, is due for a renovation after this year's spring carnival.

Sandown, meanwhile, is due to re-open next month.

– AAP

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