Quote Originally Posted by Gtrain View Post
It is a night meeting Brenno. Most trainers who travel significant distances stay for the week. The number of trainers doing that is less and less though. The race has previously carried bonus prizes such as a new float to the winning trainer. This still hasn't increased the numbers in any significant way.
The way I look at it though, if your horse can roll along ok, it's an easier 40k to target than running second in the Breeders Crown.
At the end of the day if the race was in Feb or later there would be a lot more entrants. So many trainers give up on a prep because Dec races weren't standing up (or this year there were none around) so you're rushing your horse to be ready even though there will no other races for it, or people just don't even bother in the first place because it so early. I would love a dollar for how many times a Riverina trainer has said "I would have liked to get to the Breeders Plate but the horse just wasn't ready yet". If the race is in Feb or later that horse is ready and the heat fields have a lot more numbers.

Edit: Also, are they immune to heat in their paddock and on the float?