Quality to remain up for Cup

THE Geelong Racing Club is confident it will remain a destination of choice for international raiders in 2020 but chief executive Daniel Salter says the standard of racing in Australia means a locals-only Geelong Cup in October would provide a quality lead in for Melbourne Cup hopefuls.

Last year’s winner, Prince Of Arran, who will run in tomorrow’s Ascot Gold Cup, has been earmarked for a return to Geelong by trainer Charlie Fellowes, while trainers from across the globe continue to wait for confirmation their stayers will be allowed into the country for the Spring Carnival.

Salter conceded the Geelong Cup would have a different feel this year but was adamant the quality of the field would be as strong as ever.

“We have obviously had some horses who have arrived in Geelong and won, and gone on and won the Melbourne Cup, but we probably haven’t known their potential until they have raced in the Cup,” he said.

“Prince Of Arran is looking at coming back and following the same lead up as last year, which would be terrific because we haven’t had a horse go back-to-back ever in the Geelong Cup.

“But we don’t know what that might look like and there are some pretty high-class local horses going around. We have had Geelong Cups before with no internationals that have been very strong, so we will just have to see what it looks like.

“The racing that we have seen in Australia over the past few months has been sensational and I can’t see that changing.

“It (the Geelong Cup) might look a bit different from an international point of view but the rest of it should be as good as it has ever been.”

Owners will be welcomed back to the track for next Friday’s meeting but details around packages for the Geelong Cup may not be finalised until August.

The Geelong Racing Club is confident things will have returned to close to normal by October, but Salter says plans for its biggest day of the year will be shaped over the next six weeks.

“We are still in a bit of a holding pattern with the release of our hospitality packages because until we get some certainty or more confidence with how many people we will be able to have in facilities we don’t really know what we can sell,” he said.

“The Cup is going to go ahead and we are going to have people here, but we don’t know how many. I am optimistic we will be pretty much back to normal by then and we might have a really big crowd from a public point of view but if we can’t get capacity in marquees then there is no value in building them.

“So it is just about getting some confidence to say we are going to be able to have 100 per cent or 80 per cent capacity in marquees by Geelong Cup, and then we can go on sale.

“We think that is likely to be around August. We are ready to go with everything but we just can’t press the button until we know for sure.”