A RECORD crowd for the Bendigo Jockey Club’s beach party race day is expected to be trackside at the White Hills racecourse on Saturday.
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BJC chief executive officer Aaron Hearps said early indications were the club was on track to surpass last year’s crowd figure of 3500 people.
“All our bookings are up, general admission is right up – we have sold over 1100 general admission tickets online and at the end of the day’s play last year we sold 767,” he said.
“That’s a fair indication it will be a fairly big crowd on-course tomorrow (Saturday).
“Mini-marquee packages are up, our trackside umbrellas are on par, our lawn party has 240 booked in - last year we had 199 - and the Silks dining room is about on par with last year; all the KPIs indicate it will be our biggest day yet.”
The beach party day has become a popular destination for football, netball and other sporting club trips and this year is no exception.
The huge crowd will be entertained from 3pm onwards by DJ Will Sparks, who has recently returned from a huge European tour.
The meeting will feature eight races, one more than initially scheduled with a wealth of nominations received for the 1600m benchmark 58 event.
“Nominations were really strong … we had at least two races with nominations over 50, so we were pretty sure and certain we would have more than seven races,” Hearps said.
“(Jockey) Steven Arnold was up here this morning (Friday) doing some work with Lloyd Williams’ horses and was very complimentary about the state of the track.
“The track is in great nick, the rail is out nine metres to protect it for cup day. There’s a few local horses getting around, so hopefully we can get a few local winners.”
Eleven Bendigo trainers have horses entered, including Andrew Sawden, Adam O’Neill, Paul Banks, Shaun Dwyer, Rod Symons, Brett Charry, Arthur Pace, Shane Fliedner, Danny Curran, Erin Maher and Mick Bath.
The beach party race day is the first of two marquee events for the BJC this month, with the Jayco Bendigo Cup meeting to follow on Wednesday, October 31.
Meanwhile, Kyneton trainer Bob Challis will target the $25,000 Avoca Cup (1860m), as part of a seven-race meeting at the Pyrenees region track.
An 11-horse field has been bolstered by a pair of Darren Weir runners in Dusk Falls and Mystical Spirit and recent Gunbower Cup winner Hardern, from the Mornington stable of David Brideoake.
A busy weekend for the region’s trainers will also see horses in action at Caulfield and Wodonga on Saturday and Horsham on Sunday.
