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Moonee Valley has been given the all clear for racing after emergency repairs were undertaken less than two weeks out from its historic Cox Plate meeting. (Photo by Michael Dodge\/Getty Images)<\/p>\nMoonee Valley has been given the all clear for racing after emergency repairs were undertaken less than two weeks out from its historic Cox Plate meeting. (Photo by Michael Dodge\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Moonee Valley Racing Club chief executive Michael Browell insists emergency repairs to the track conducted this week won\u2019t jeopardise the staging of the upcoming Cox Plate day.<\/p>\n
A leak under the section around the 1500-metre mark left the surrounding area waterlogged and in need of repair.<\/p>\n
The Straight has learned a two-metre-wide trench was dug 40 cm into the track earlier this week to address the flooding issue, which was caused when a contractor hit an underground seam of water while removing conduit.<\/p>\n
Workers have since installed a membrane, which it is hoped will prevent large volumes of water from seeping to the surface.<\/p>\n
With just over a week until the feature race meeting, which will herald the final Cox Plate held on the current surface before it is dug up and the whole track is re-laid, there is understandably concerns over the impact the flooding may have had.<\/p>\n
But Browell said Racing Victoria stewards gave the track the all clear on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been fully repaired, fully replaced, and the stewards inspected it yesterday morning and again this morning after we had some horses gallop over it and it\u2019s got the all clear,\u201d he told The Straight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made sure we captured more than what we needed to, so to make sure that it would be completely stable, we\u2019ve done a two metre width.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re glad that we identified it this week to give it \u2026 ten days into the Moonee Valley Gold Cup meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guys identified it quickly, had it gone unnoticed it would have caused an issue, but the track and everything underneath, it\u2019s 30 years old, pipes and cables and drainage and all that, so we\u2019re just fortunate that the team identified the issue and were able to get the experts on course to get it sorted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MVRC have been liaising with Racing Victoria chief steward Rob Montgomery as well as the Victoria Racing Club head of racecourses Liam O\u2019Keeffe and representatives from Evergreen Turf about the track issue.<\/p>\n
Browell confirmed it was the removal of old electrical conduit that had caused the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe initially thought that there was a one-and-a-half-square-metre section in the middle of the track that was affected that might have needed to be replaced, but we engaged Evergreen to make sure that we identified any surrounding areas and they took a conservative approach,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey dug out more than what we needed to, compacted the whole profile, put new turf on top, and yeah, come next Tuesday morning when we have Breakfast With The Best, you wouldn\u2019t be able to pick where the work was done.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is understood that the work to remove the conduit had originally been scheduled to be completed five months ago but was then delayed and was carried out last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under the construction contract, Hampton, the project developer, has to have any work involving the course signed off by the MVRC executive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A person with knowledge of the issue, who is not allowed to speak publicly, told The Straight it was surprising that the work was approved just two weeks out from the Cox Plate.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was also supposed to be a set of test drilling conducted near the track to ensure there would be no issues, but if this was done, nobody is aware of it,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is going to have to be constant monitoring of the track ahead of the last Cox Plate to be held on this track. The test will come when horses gallop over this patch and we will have to see how it performs then.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, if there is significant rain it may also have a big impact on whether this section can hold up satisfactorily.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some 50 horses are expected to gallop on the course at the Breakfast With The Best event next Tuesday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moonee Valley has been given the all clear for racing after emergency repairs were undertaken less than two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-203249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}