All roads lead to West Wyalong’s cup meeting this Sunday

One of New South Wales most iconic harness racing country circuits West Wyalong stages their cup meet meeting this Sunday and expectations are high that the meeting will be a major success for local industry participants.

West Wyalong straddled between the Riverina and Central West New South Wales has been racing for decades. Over 20 years ago there used to be five to six meetings per year and then about four.

Club President Rodney Lemon explained

We were given a couple of Fridays as a compromise to maintain our number of meetings. But they didn’t work for us in terms of tote turnover and also that due to us being a complete volunteer club our people couldn’t take off Friday.

So we’re now just two Sundays per year.

Lemon attributes the continuity of the West Wyalong club being a result of having a strong and passionate committee.

In order to keep up racing, we’ve had to keep upgrading infrastructure.

Over time we’ve put in an outside running rail, wash down bays, new swabs stall, and a new stewards room. The 804 metre track has a 175 metre home straight and has a cracker dust surface.

Lemon added:

The cracker dust surface requires a lot of water, but not much maintenance. This Sunday we’ll need 15 loads of water as we have lots of horses. Then after Sunday we’ll apply a conditioner top.

We run trials on Saturday and we need to have them here as we’re over 100 kms to nearest trial centre. That’s what keeps us going. If we lost our trials we’d gradually lose trainers and eventually our volunteers. A new track was put down in 1983.

We get a good mix from both central west New South Wales, Bathurst and the Riverina. As they all have differing styles of racing which makes for keen and entertaining races.

This Sunday will be family friendly a fun day and with mini trots programmed. There’ll be an  on course tote and bookmaker.

For this Sunday the club has total nominations at almost 200 and there’ll be a full book of sponsors for both meetings.

At their second meeting on Sunday week the club will stage a Heat of the Waratah whereby the Final will be held at Menangle shortly after. They’ve been able to run heats over the last 7 to 8 years.

Lemon considers that Major Roll trained by Stephen Maguire early in his career was the best horse in the region. Major Roll who won 24 races and nearly a quarter of a million dollars went 1.59.6 winning at West Wyalong in April 2019.

As for the cup meeting this weekend it’s a bumper ten event card. The cup race at just under $20,000 is an even race and there’ll be great interest in the New Zealander Captain Moonlite in the Russell Jack stable who makes his Australian debut. He’s awkwardly drawn on the inside of the second row and he’ll face keen opposition from Gleneagle Ruler, Shez Sweet Louise, Ima Boxer who are all on the second row as well as three year Imon who is racing consistently.

By Tony Milanese for Harnesslink