Jockey Luke Currie says the new Caulfield Heath track felt like carpet as he and fellow riders partnered two-year-olds in four jump-outs on Tuesday morning.
The jump-outs, for two-year-olds entered in next month’s Group 1 Blue Diamond Stakes, were the second serious test for the track after the Ciaron Maher and David Eustace stable took 10 horses to gallop at the venue last week.
The Heath track is the new circuit built inside the existing Caulfield course proper and the four jump-outs on Tuesday were conducted over 800m.
Joining Currie at the jump-outs were Mark Zahra, Ben Melham, Harry Coffey, Blake Shinn, Jye McNeil, John Allen, Blaike McDougall and Michael Dee while a more strenuous test of the track will be conducted on January 29 when official trials are held over varying distances.
Currie, who last month returned from a riding stint in Hong Kong, said the two-year-olds seemed to get around the track ‘well enough’.
“It’s well cambered, quite tight, but those horses today, not being under too much pressure cornering, seemed to get around it pretty well.
“It will be different with bigger fields on race day, but you couldn’t knock it on what we’ve done today.
“The surface seemed pretty good too. It felt like a carpet, but time will tell whether it’s had enough time to consolidate or not.”
Currie said the official trials in just under two weeks would give a better guide to the track.
He said there was likely to be more pressure in those trials with the majority of starts on the new track being in use.
“There will be older horses that will be pushed off the bridle around the corner which will give it a bit more variance than what there was today,” Currie said.
“But you would be giving it a tick off today, no worries.”
Victorian Jockeys’ Association chief executive Matthew Hyland said the riders he spoke to were happy with the surface.
“We will get some more formal feedback from the group that rode here this morning and pass that on to the MRC,” Hyland said.
“Most of the feedback, especially about the surface was positive and once they run the officials here in a couple of weeks and run from some of the other starts, we’ll get some more feedback from that also.”