IMPROVING TRACKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26199, 9 July 1946, Page 7

IMPROVING TRACKS

FORBURY PARK COURSE RESURFACING RACE CIRCUIT As a part of its post-war scheme of improvements, the Forbury Park Trotting Club is carrying out the resurfacing of the inside half of the racuig track and regrading the training track. For some time the racing track has been showing signs of wear and tear, but the war and the consequent shortage of labour made it. impossible for anything to be done until now. The race track, which is of five furlongs in circuit, and is constructed of clay, was last resurfaced late in 1938. and it is significant that in the following January Parisienne established a two-mile record of 4min 15 3-ssec, a record which still stands. It is confidently expected by club officials that, the track will be in first-class condi-' tion for the club’s next race meeting, which will be held in October.

Visit of Inspection

Yesterday afternoon a visit of inspection was paid to the course by Messrs B. S. Irwin (president), A. Ferguson (chairman of the Works Committee) and C. R. Caffin (secretary), together with an Otago Daily Times report eland a photographer. The whoie of the inside half of the racing track had been scraped to a depth of about four or five inches, and the material deposited in the middle of the course. It was explained by Mr Ferguson that the club considered it was not necessary to touch the outside half of the track, as

it was the inside which was always called upon to stand up to racing The work was commenced last Friday, and had been completed on Saturday. The bulldozer which had carried out this part of the operations with such expedition and with an efficiency that could not be expected from manual labour, was then doing similar work on the training track. When the party arrived a mechanical loader, the invention of one /of the contractors carrying out the work, Mr M. Stevenson, was taking up about three-quarters of a yard of'the debris at a time and depositing it in a lorry, tyyo of which were being kept at full pressure to keep up with the loader. When loaded the lorry removed the spoil to the training track, which is just inside the racing circuit. It is interesting to note that ip the days before anything more mechanical than a tip-dray or a wheelbarrow was used for such jobs, the work, which will be completed this week, would have taken at least a month, even with a small army of men. It is expected that all the debris will be removed from the track by to-day, and a start will then be made with the most important part of the contract, the resurfacing of the track with clay Several hundred yards of clay will be needed, and Mr Ferguson said yesterday that a good deal of attention had been paid beforehand to the class of clay to be used. He descrjbed it as a “putty type, and he was confident that there would be no better clay track in the Dominion after a week or two than that provided at Forbury. Little Interruption

A good deal of the material from the racing circuit will be used in regrading the surface of the training track. This is the off season so far as training at Forbury Park is concerned, but thenare a number of horses trained in the district, whose owners make use of the track. One or two of them turned up yesterday morning, but both circuits then looked as if they were in the process of recovering from a " blitzing.” Provided the .weather remains fine, however, the track should be at the sendee of trainers again this week, such are the miracles performed in these days of -bulldozers and other labour-saving devices.