Scottsville Saturday

How much rain did Scottsville have?

Yes, well, this is world class Scottsville that we are talking about.

gregbucks Wrote:

---

> How much rain did Scottsville have?

165mm since Sunday last week.

27mm in the last 3 days. I would have thought that the few hours sunshine we had on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and Friday was sufficient to dry out the tracks.
We did have rain every night though.

Drainage problems East, when are they going to sort this out?

I have to agree that that is a lot of rain, but the bulk of it fell early in the week and one has to be seriously worried about the future if is going to take our tracks this long to recover. Not there is much to be done about it, at least until the day when (if?) we get an a/w track. Artificial surfaces may have their problems, but if they're good enough for the rest of the world why should they not be good enough for us? I am talking about a/w tracks in principle, not the cost of installing one.

Greg - Has to be drainage . But 165mm is a lot of rain.
The sun only shines for a few hours per day . Not sufficient enough for me.
They did say "soft underfoot conditions" . This would indicate to me that there was not nearly enough sun to dry the track out completely.
Same as my garden. the soil is still wet every morning when I go out to pray.

All GC tracks need attention.

Not to be funny or repetative, but in all seriousness Scottsville's drainage is not the greatest and it takes a whole lot less than 165 mls to create a problem. I have been told that it is slowly coming right, although it appears to be happening at the speed of continental drift. Greyville seems to have gone backwards from my early days in Durban, back in the 70s, but it would be interesting to compare rainfall figures from those days to today.

Drainage issues can be solved, though. Fairview's drainage has improved beyond recognition from its early days (it opened in 1977), while the late Newmarket had some major problems in the 80s that were later resolved. Believe it or not, there was a Newmarket meeting in around 1985 where the going was described as "firm but heavy in places." Maybe that was due to a broken water pipe or something else other than weather, especially as it happened in winter, but still!

Matthew - Any idea what there have done at Fairview.

I am of the opinion that they need a "light sand topping" to negate the almost clay top layer of soil.

Spoke to Kom earlier and he said they had had huge rain and not enough really strong sun to dry it out. Drainage is improving but with the rain we had at Greyville and Scottsville we had very little chance of racing. People must also not get confused with the cricket grounds or football grounds as the players are not putting down 14 tons per square inch when they are running around as a racehorse is doing at full gallop. VERY different.

Craig - I have to agree with you. Same reasons as per my earlier post.

But , MORE needed from GC else this problem will persist every season from Nov to end Jan.

We seem to be discussing this every year on ABC.

Come on guys this is a light shower compared to the UK...

Very true, Craig.

I'm not sure what they did at Fairview, except make up for the fact that the original job when the course was built was more like a half job. The late Stanley Greeff (who knew EVERYTHING that happened in PE in the last half a century) told me that the cost of building Fairview was become exhorbitant and the straight ended up with much inferior drainage to the back stretch - which had been done properly. We won't however go into the reason why Fairview was built in a marsh to start with, when another alternative site was available with the added bonus that it would have been much closer to town. You don't need a fertile imagination or a penchant for conspiracy theories to work it out.()

Someone like Mike Greeff or Mike Rishworth would have a better idea of how it was eventually fixed. Obviously it took money, something which Gold Circle are desperately short of, so all we can do is hope the weather improves - long term.