When the glad rags are all put away and your occasional punter’s attention shifts to the everyday ordinary, the work behind the scenes is continuing unabashed.
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The Border is fortunate enough to have two major racing carnivals.
There can be no dispute that the Albury Gold Cup is the premier event, for the numbers it attracts, for the quality of the fields and the overall buzz and great fun.
Racing Wodonga has been working extremely hard to point its own marquee even, the Wodonga Gold Cup, down the same path.
Obviously that’s no a straight-forward proposition. It takes a lot of careful, strategic planning and a fair dose of patience to realise it’s not going to all happen straight away.
The medium- to long-term is where the greatest rewards will be reaped, but that does not mean there cannot be some big wins in the short term.
One of the more obvious examples of that is having a public holiday in place to coincide with the carnival.
For Wodonga, that has involved switching the city’s day off from that first Tuesday in November when, as the saying goes, the nation stops to watch the Melbourne Cup.
Many would wholeheartedly support Wodonga Gold Cup day becoming an annual fixture on the public holidays calendar.
Likewise, others reckon nothing can go past that esteemed meet at Flemington Racecourse, that it really should be for an event of some significance – such as the cup – to justify a day off for all.
It has to be said that regardless of whether you have a day off for the Melbourne Cup, or not, it doesn’t stop people from finding the nearest TV to see the race in action.
Those who really want to go to the event itself will plan ahead and make sure they get the day off anyway.
That means the argument in favour of a Wodonga Gold Cup holiday is even stronger.
But it is essential too that for the sake of efforts to make the event a truly signficant occasion on the region’s social and sporting calendar there needs to be a few certainties thrown in to the mix.
For the Wodonga Racing Club, being able to lock-in the day off as a definite for the five years beyond 2018, as is its wish, will play a key role in growing the event.
This is a point that Wodonga Council should seriously consider when it sits down to make its decision on the proposal.
