The St Patrick’s Races have been run once again, with the Garret Lynch-trained Shiny Rock, ridden by Tala Hutchinson, winning the Outback Cup.
With a sell-out crowd heading to the Racecourse on Saturday, the St Patrick’s Race Club committee deemed the 59th annual race meeting a resounding success as the event attracted plenty of interest from locals and visitors from interstate.
“I think it’s one of the most successful race meetings we’ve had. We think our figures are up about 15 per cent on last year, which is a positive sign. We couldn’t be happier. It’s a massive effort by a group of around 25 people to pull that off,” Club President, Andrew Schmidt, told the Barrier Truth.
“I had the CEO of Racing NSW, Brian Charman, ring and congratulate the Club. The feedback he’s had from the race officials from Racing NSW were that it was an outstanding meeting.
“The most important thing from their point of view is things like the racetrack, starting gates, stables, all those sorts of things, and the way the meeting’s conducted. He was absolutely over the moon with how we ran that.”
“Feedback from the trainers was that the track was just in outstanding condition, which is very important for the racing side of it. That’s thanks to Steve Radford and Andrew Finlayson, who were responsible for preparing it.
New innovations such as livestreaming each race on Facebook through Palm AV allowed for those who couldn’t make it to the event to still watch, with the response also exceeding expectations.
“Palm AV said the response and interaction on the livestreaming of our races were through the roof. That’s something we introduced this year and as you can imagine we had comments from all over Australia,” Mr Schmidt said.
“The other thing which we brought in last year, having the big screen on the back of the truck which shows all the races, local and interstate. It was what the public wanted. We spent a few thousand dollars rewiring the sound system – St Pat’s spent about $4,000 on that – and again, the feedback was huge.”
“From the hospitality side of things, everything we did worked an absolute treat. Introducing The Demo Wine Bar where people can sit in air-conditioned comfort worked really well. Selling our tickets online where people walk up to the gate, gain entry, and walk straight in is brilliant.
“I’ve really got to mention the Council, because they forked out that mobile phone tower and if we didn’t have that phone tower, you would have had no bookmakers and half the crowd wouldn’t have been there because people rely so heavily on it.
“The fashions were outstanding. That was huge. We had 1500 people in marquees under shade, that was massive. From our point of view, it was a very successful day.”
The Club committee will hold its review meeting on Tuesday to go through what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved upon for next year’s milestone 60th race meeting – which could soon have a date as Mr Schmidt expects an even greater turnout.
“We know as a committee we have an obligation to put this event on every year and every year we just want to try and make it better and better,” he said.
“Next year is our 60th race meeting and when we had our 50th, we had a massive crowd. Indications now are that next year could be a bigger St Pat’s – that’s just the early bookings and groups coming through right now. As soon as we get that race date, I reckon we’ll be selling tickets by the end of May.”
