Club seeks elite runners

Racing boss on mission to enhance Hollindale

GOLD COAST Turf Club racing manager Ian Brown will soon go on a scouting expedition in the hope of finding the horses who could finally make the A.D. Hollindale Stakes a Group 1 race.

The club has been on a quest for years to get the Group 2 race, to be held on Gold Coast Cup Day on May 2, upgraded to Group 1 status for years without luck. The race is judged by officials over a threeyear period, with the average rating of the horses involved in that time frame used as part of the criteria.

Brown will fly to Sydney and Melbourne to meet trainers and spruik the $500,000 race in an effort to convince them to bring elite runners to the Gold Coast in order to bump up the average rating.

“Our goal is to develop the Hollindale into a Group 1 over the next two years,” GCTC CEO Steve Lines said.

“We have to get it rated highly with the patch panel and that’s about having highly rated horses.

“Ian will head down in the not too distant future to attract some nice horses up here.

“He will visit the stables and some of their classy horses to try and get them into the Group 2 Hollindale.

“We have to do it consistently so we will keep working hard at it. It might be another year or two but we desperately want a Group 1 race for the Gold Coast to have something they are proud of. We want to turn Gold Coast Cup Day into the locals day.”

Chris Waller’s Life Less Ordinary and Mister Sea Wolf finished one and two respectively in last year’s Hollindale, with the winner going on to finish second in the Group 1 Doomben Cup the run after while the latter placed in the Group 1 Canterbury Stakes earlier this month.