Doomben in twilight trial for night move
A series of twilight meetings at Doomben will determine several issues involving the introduction of night racing at the track.
Racing Queensland and the Brisbane Racing Club have had preliminary discussions about installing lights at Doomben with the view to staging twilight-night meetings.
It is part of an overall strategy announced by RQ last week which also included night racing at the Gold Coast.
Night racing ideas at Doomben are nothing new because preliminary work was done on moving harness racing there in conjunction with night gallops a decade ago.
However, RQ and the BRC are committed to the latest plan which would see 8pm finish times because of the track being in a residential area.
There are five consecutive Thursday meetings at Doomben scheduled from early January to early February.
On those days the traditional Wednesday midweek meetings will be held at provincial centres around the state.
The Doomben meetings will be twilight, starting at about 2pm and ending about 6.30pm.
Race officials have been worried about the decline in interest in Wednesday racing which has been the traditional secondary meeting of the week.
It is hoped the Thursday trial will determine the public reaction both crowd-wise and betting-wise to twilight-night racing on that night.