By Nick Creely

It has been a hectic schedule for Royal Randwick racecourse manager Michael Wood and his staff across the Sydney Autumn Carnival, with six weeks of racing culminating in two Group 1 races last Saturday (19 April) as part of the All Aged Stakes Day. Wood and his crew of 26 full-time staff and four casuals – responsible for the racing surface, training tracks, gardens and landscaping – also held The Star Championships on 5 and 12 April.

“We’ve managed to get some youth in and some new staff, just for a variety of different reasons,” he said. “Some new guys have come in and are really skilled and I think they presented the place brilliantly.

“From a turf perspective, in the three weeks we had during the carnival we had around 372 horses hit the track and, in some sections, did two laps of the track. We went into it as well as we could have done. The anchorage and stability of the turf was really good. From a racing point of view, it’s probably racing as well as it has been.

"(Jockey) James McDonald said on Saturday that we’ve not ever had it as good consistently over the three days. He didn’t ride on the first day, but it was good to get a good wrap from him there.”

Wood said the weather and conditions on race day helped the cause and believed his team were in a strong position to handle any challenges on the track. Across the three race days the track was rated a Soft 6 (19 April), a Good 4 (12 April) and Soft 5 (5 April).

“We couldn’t have asked for better racing days to be honest, there was three perfect days,” he said. “We got our fair share of rain across the carnival though. We got around 100mm of rain leading into week one and then had 25mm and another 25mm. It meant I didn’t have to irrigate, it set it up well enough.

"Six or seven years ago if I got that amount of rain, it probably would have been a heavy track. The work we’ve done in the last few years has probably set us up to take on quite a lot of rain. Because of the conditions and just the overall traffic (on the track) it had a bit of disease pressure heading into the final week but that’s not overly unexpected. Thankfully we didn’t have any flooding or anything like that.”

The carnival itself also featured the famed TAB Golden Slipper at sister track Rosehill, with 18 Group 1 races and $46 million in prize money up for grabs in total. Jimmysstar, ridden by jockey Ethan Brown and trained by Ciaron Maher, took out the 1400m All Aged Stakes ahead of the Chris Waller-trained Joliestar. It was the master trainer and former Melbourne Cup winner’s 10th Group 1 win this season.

Wood and his team won’t have much downtime as they prepare for their Anzac Day meetings this Friday (25th) and Saturday (26th) with barrier trials taking place today (Thursday). “It certainly never stops but we look forward to it,” he said.