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Club Spotlight: Ewan

20 September 2021

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Ewan-Amateur-Turf-Club-facebook-08.jpgBy Jordan Gerrans

For the Ewan Amateur Turf Club to reach their first ever TAB race day this week – it is a significant milestone for the bush North Queensland club.

For the team behind the Ewan club – which is based inland from Townsville – they are not settled on racing a TAB race day in 2021 alone, they want to go bigger and better again next year and beyond.

Landing on the national spotlight of their first-ever TAB race day has been around six years in the making.

In the middle of 2015 after almost 100 years of grass fed racing, Ewan officials made this difficult decision, after serious deliberation, to run a corn fed non-TAB meeting from that year forward, which has since been elevated to a TAB day.

President David Woodhouse, who grew up in the area and has not missed an Ewan meeting in his life, explained that countless hours of work and planning have gone into the club landing on the TAB stage.

“This is our fifth year, we had a transition from a picnic grass fed meeting into a professional meeting,” Woodhouse said.

“At that point in time, we had a successful meeting attracting 1500 patrons each year, it was a pretty big event in the local community.

“As a race club we decided that if we wanted to go professional then we had to go the best we could and get to the top, so we started to build the infrastructure and the track and everything – with a hope of bringing the better class horses.

‘It has come to fruition the last three or four years, increasing our prize money with a view to getting a TAB day.

“It is an honour to be given this TAB meeting date and we are excited to televise our event live to the nation.

“This incentive will attract new participants to our region and cement firmly, our footprint in the industry. We must also acknowledge the ongoing support of Racing Queensland.”

Over the years, Ewan have slowly improved their facilities, including a flash new jockeys room, lifted prize money through the efforts of the local council, Racing Queensland and the club itself.

Charters Towers trainer John Barr looks forward to his annual trip to Ewan, referring to it is a holiday, loving the atmosphere that goes along with the two-day racing carnival, as most punters and participants camp near the track during and in the lead-in to the race days.

“I have been there since the grass fed days since it used to be paddock horses, I have been going there for a long time,” Barr said.

“A TAB meeting, that is unheard of for a place like Ewan, it is one of the best bush tracks you will come across at Ewan.

“The boys have been working on it the last few months and it is almost turf the whole way around now.

“For a bush track, a TAB day is so exciting.

“It is a great weekend, the club offers great prize money and social wise and for racing, as well.”

IMG-6314.jpgOver the two-day carnival, Ewan will race as a TAB meeting on Friday and revert to a non-TAB race day on Saturday, allowing for different class horses to get a run over the 48 hours.

Woodhouse hopes Friday’s TAB day “is the start of something big”, looking to build again into 2022 – which will be the 100th year of racing in Ewan.

After the 1970 meeting at Ewan, the committee decided to relocate the running rails to its present site on Stockyard Creek.

The first meeting held at Stockyard Creek was in 1971 – making it 50 years of racing at the site this week.

Woodhouse, a former jockey who has now turned his hand to racing administration, thinks the two days at Ewan is as almost as good as it gets when it comes to bush racing in the Sunshine State.

“Outside of Birdsville, there is probably only two other meetings that are of similar character and that is us and Oak Park,” he said.

“They are major events within the community and from an industry point of view, they are well received.

“The core thing that the club has developed is that everything is done around family.

“It is a pretty good weekend to cater from young kids to older people, to come together.”

The name of the club is an acknowledgement to the humble beginnings of the race, when the meeting was held at the old mining township of Ewan.

Woodhouse was elected president in 2013, after holding various positions since 2002.

While RQ and the local council have contributed to Ewan’s growth, the club itself has put their money where their mouth is to become a major player on the North Queensland racing circuit.

The club’s committee fund a groundskeeper to prepare the surface in the months leading into race day, believing if their facilities are top notch – it will improve the standard of jockeys, trainers and horses in the coming years.

Ewan’s officials aim to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 on improvements for their facilities every year, including, in recent years, two new public show and toilet blocks, 16 day stalls for gallopers, a roof to block the afternoon sun from the horses and an upgraded water options.

“It is a significant investment to ensure the racing surface is attracting the right quality of horse,” the club president said.

Barr, who trains a team of four horses at Charters Towers, has collected 40 winners at Ewan across his career, running at 45 per cent when it comes to his gallopers finishing in the top three at the track.

“It is a tight little track with a straight that isn’t massive,” Barr said.

“In the old days it took the right type of horse as it is more dirt but now it is grass and the running rail has improved, you just need a horse that handles the firm going and a sprinter makes a difference too because of the distance of the races.

“Once you are around the corner at Ewan, it is only 250 metres to home.

Ewan-Amateur-Turf-Club-facebook-19.jpg“You would like to have something up on the pace, something that leads or is right there with them.”

Top Charters Towers trained Ben Williams is expected to send a big team of horses to Ewan this weekend.

The $30,000 Ewan Cup is Friday’s feature event and will serve as a qualifier for this year’s Country Cups Challenge, with the winner going on to run at Doomben as part of the TAB Queensland Summer Racing Carnival in early December. 

Sky Racing experts Michael Charge and Tony Wode will participate in a tipping challenge on the first day of the Ewan carnival, with all proceeds going to the Queensland Off-The-Track Program and the National Jockeys Trust, with punters able to follow the tipping contest on RQ’s digital channels.

Club spotlight will be a regular feature that shines a light on the unique and individual racing clubs across Queensland.