For much of the week, Saturday's NSW Picnic Champion Series Final has been the furthest thing from Gavin Groth's mind.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
The Gunnedah trainer will saddle up one the favourites for the $50,000 feature.
But with the town experiencing its third major flood in two months and the racecourse resembling in inland sea, Groth's thoughts have been more with the welfare of his horses than upcoming races.
He spent the earlier part of the week wading them from their water-logged stables to the refuge of the walking machine, which was "the only bit of dry ground". Then after the water started receding, the focus turned to the clean up.
Situated on the junction of the Namoi and Mooki Rivers, the racecourse is prone to flooding, but in his 18 years training and living there (he has a house at the course), Groth can't remember the water coming up as high as it did.
"I've never had water go through my stables," he said.
It was knee deep.
On the "flat areas", he reckoned at the height there was "probably two foot of water everywhere".
It was a stressful time: the worst part that there "wasn't a great deal we could do".
"We did get one truckload out but by the time we got them out and I got back down there, the crossing was too deep to go back out, too dangerous," he said.
"So we were stranded down there for Saturday through to Wednesday."
"And it was a really hard few days I'll tell you."
He said the first eight or nine hours, the younger horses were "very panicky and upset about it." But after a day, they settled down.
"When we got them to that stage, we were able to walk them out of their stables, albeit through water knee-high."
For the first couple of days, Groth said, they were getting them out three times a day and joked that he's never seen horses so excited to get out of their boxes to go to the walking machine.
"We did exercise them on it, but even if we just stood them in there, five at a time, just so they got a bit of daylight and their feet could be dry," he said.
The water wasn't the only issue.
The feed is usually delivered of a Monday. Knowing that was unlikely to happen, when they got the first load of horses out they got a friend to get as much as they could fit in the back of their car.
"Unfortunately, it wasn't enough so then we liaised with the SES on Sunday and Monday and organised for them to bring it out to us," Groth said.
It's made for a less than ideal preparation for Danspur for the picnic finale, which after three false starts is set to finally be run at Dubbo.
The nine-year-old won the Mallawa and Wean Cup's and was the top qualifier through to the final, but Groth hasn't really been able to get any substantial track work into him for the last few weeks.
"It'll be probably a hard watch the last furlong," he conceded.
"If it had of went ahead on Coonamble Cup Day when it was supposed to I thought he was a really good live chance. But since then, it's just been rain after rain and flood after flood here and he hasn't had any hard, serious work.
"He's been ticked over, you know, trotting and cantering and using the walker and the swimming pool, the swimming has been his main tool."
He was among those they evacuated on Saturday with Groth expressing his gratitude to fellow Gunnedah trainer Sally Torrens for taking him to her training facility and looking after him for a few days.
"Fortunately he's drawn really kind tomorrow, where the first two draws he was drawn off the track," he said.
"That will really help him, being drawn soft, he'll get a soft run and hopefully he can still be effective."
Groth will also have Gunfighter and Bacari at Dubbo, and Barren Jack at Quirindi.
The six-race Sky 2 status TAB meeting has been put on by Racing NSW as an additional meeting in light of all the washed out meetings around the Hunter and North West.
The first jumps at 1.55pm.
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
- Bookmark northerndailyleader.com.au
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Instagram
- Follow us on Google News
