Weetwood Handicap date expected to move

Wednesday 10 April 2019, 11:11am

For the first time in its long history, there could be two Weetwood Handicaps run in the same year with Toowoomba allocated a September Saturday stand-alone.

The Weetwood, inaugurated 120 years ago, has traditionally been run in late March or early April to fit in with the Toowoomba show.

The show was held in late March this year and the Weetwood was run last week and won by the Chris Waller-trained Sexy Eyes.

However, there has been speculation about a date shift after Toowoomba was allocated a stand-alone metropolitan meeting on September 21 but no meeting in April in the new race dates released last week.

Toowoomba has a major tourist attraction in the Carnival of Flowers which runs from September 20 to 29.

One suggestion is the race could be promoted through the tourist body backing the carnival.

Racing Queensland has made no comment on the possible move but is expected to do so in the next fortnight.

The other major change is that Eagle Farm will again host the Queensland Oaks meeting next year giving it three Group One Saturdays in a row.

This year Doomben has the Oaks meeting again to give Eagle Farm a break between Group One days.

The dates also provide for an experiment with twilight Thursday meetings at Doomben in summer.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »