How wet will Randwick be on Saturday?

Clinton Payne - Wednesday October 18

Sydney's unseasonable dry spell is set to end on Friday but how much rain will fall in the 24 hours preceding the feature race meeting at Randwick.

The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting an 80 percent chance between 10 and 20mm to fall at Bondi, which is less than five kilometres from Randwick racecourse, but track manager Navesh Ramdhani is hopeful even less precipitation will fall at the track.

"We subscribe to our own weather station Ubimet and they are saying in total on Friday we can expect six mils," Ramdhani said.

"They give us rainfall expectations in three-hour blocks and that is the total rainfall expected for the whole day.

"Ubimet provide us data from right over Randwick racecourse using all the equipment in this area.

"They provide information to a lot of the major sporting events like the Melbourne Cup and the Formula One race."

Ramdhani said his track has held-up "as well as could be expected" after its heavy spring workload. Randwick has hosted meetings for the previous three weeks and seven of the past 11 Saturdays.

"There was a bit of kickback last Saturday but there's been a lot of racing on the track over the past couple of months," he said.

"The track has handled it as well as you could expect. It's as healthy as it's been for a very long time.

"We're out to nine metres this week. There will be kickback but I'm sure the track will handle the traffic.

"We knew there was going to be a big workload this spring and I think overall the track has raced as well as anyone could expect considering the amount of horses that have been racing on it over the past two to three months."

Meanwhile, Ramdhani said he expects all the new turf to be laid on the rebuilt Kensington track within the next four weeks.

The much-maligned track has been out of action for almost two years after the decision was made to completely rebuild the racetrack after its failure to handle traffic when last rebuilt.

"It will all happen very quickly over the next month," he said. "We should have all the grass laid by the middle of next month.

"It will grow in over the summer and we could be racing on it by the end of the autumn next year."

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