By Jordan Gerrans
After more than two decades training on the Glitter Strip, the retiring Bryan Guy believes racing on the Gold Coast is set to “take-off” in the coming years on the back of the club’s upcoming multimillion-dollar redevelopment.
After making the decision to call time on his Group 1-winning training career in recent weeks, the respected veteran could not go out a winner on Saturday afternoon at his adopted home track.
Four of his gallopers ran in the money on Saturday at Aquis Park but the Team Guy couldn’t sail into the sunset with a victory on the final day of his training career.
Guy, who trained in partnership with his son Daniel, is optimistic and bullish about the future of racing on the Gold Coast when he reflects on his over 20 years of experience training at the venue.
The Palaszczuk Government has made a $33 million commitment to the multimillion-dollar redevelopment at Bundall which will deliver a full refurbishment of the racing surfaces, along with lights, an in-field tunnel and an all-weather synthetic track.
“The Gold Coast has changed for the better in my time here and it is only going to get better from here,” Guy said.
“Racing in Queensland is starting to get going a bit.
“I think it is going to be sensational when the club gets where it is going with all the redevelopments, with all the plans they have got, it looks like it is going to take-off.
“The facilities, they are always getting done up, as is the track, let’s hope it does come through and when it does, hopefully the people follow and support it.”
As the Gold Coast-based club is working towards becoming the ‘Happy Valley’ of Australian racing, Aquis Park Turf Club CEO Steve Lines says Guy’s decision to relocate north from NSW all those years gave the club legitimacy.
“For one of the leading Sydney trainers to move up here in the early stages of our club just over a couple of decades ago, he is very important to us,” Lines said.
“He is apart of our fabric, Bryan and his family, his wife and son, who off course he trained in partnership with.”
The Gold Coast Turf Club held a special function to farewell the Guy stable on Saturday afternoon, presenting the team with a plaque alongside many of the jockeys who rode for them over years.
Making his retirement official publicly less than a week before his last starter as a trainer, Bryan says he was overwhelmed by phone calls and messages from people he has crossed paths from his decades within in the industry, giving him the opportunity to “reminisce”.
“It has been tough, really, thinking back how long I have been in the racing game and how good it has been to me,” he said.
“The response has been something I did not expect, but it was touching really. I have got so many friends out of racing over the years. It has been surreal really.”
Bryan is the son of champion Sydney trainer Ray Guy, who he rode work for as a teenager, before eventually taking over his stable of gallopers when his father passed away in 1992.
Ravarda’s triumph in the George Ryder Stakes at Rosehill in 1996 is his greatest achievement on the race track, one of his four Group 1 victories.
“For Ravarda to win two Group 1s and at the time when I was training at Rosehill, he won on my home track,” Guy said.
“To win a Group 1 on my home track, where I was brought up and where I went through school, I used to run the track and all that stuff, it was just sensational.”