Dubbo Turf Club preparing for Gold Cup and spring feature meetings

Friday's eight-race card will help launch an exciting time for the Dubbo club, with the next meeting to feature cup and sprint preludes, before the $100,000 Dubbo Gold Cup meeting in September and then the annual Derby Day and Melbourne Cup Day meetings.

Work has been occurring on and off the track at the club, with facilities being upgraded while the racing surface has received plenty of attention during what has been a wet winter.

"Coming into the spring it is a very exciting time for the club," Dubbo Turf Club general manager Sam Fitzgerald said.

"It's our feature period of racing ... and the preparation for that has started in the last couple of months and people will start to see those preparations coming to fruition with the track and some of the other works."

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The Dubbo racing surface has been held in high regard for a number of years now - proven again this week with 208 nominations for Friday's meeting - and Fitzgerald was pleased it was again in a strong position despite plenty of rain in recent months.

"It's off the back of some very sound investment by the club five or six years ago with the installation of the slip drainage system into the track," Fitzgerald said.

"Now we're in a position where we can handle large volumes of rain and obviously sustained periods of rain and the tracks seems to respond well and the water seems to get away quite quickly.

"We're very lucky. Our heart goes out to a lot of clubs that have lost meetings during this very wet period but, certainly, we're very happy with our track.

"It (Friday's meeting) will be a good chance to see how the track has responded to our winter turf management plan we've had on."

The rail will be out 5m on Friday to help protect the inside section of the track from the 1000m to the 1400m after all the rain but that will be back in the true position by cup time in September to ensure capacity fields line up in the feature events.

On Friday, the Maas Benchmark 74 Handicap (1015m) shapes as one of the better races of the day despite there being just a field of nine locked in on Thursday morning.

Leading Dubbo trainers Brett Robb and Clint Lundholm will have chances in that event, with the former saddling up promising last-start winner Dalavin while the latter will send out the consistent Tells Tails.

Clayton Gallagher and Ken Dunbar will ride those hopes respectively while Billy Cray will pilot Pure Fuego for Scone trainer Cameron Crockett.

A Country Championships finalist last year, Pure Fuego has been lightly-raced in recent times and heads to Dubbo having had just four starts in the past year.

The five-year-old gelding impressed when running third in a Highway in May while he was eighth in another Highway last start.

Orange trainer Alison Smith's Billabong Isle, who ran second at Dubbo last month before finishing seventh in a Rosehill Highway earlier this month, and Mandalong Roman from the Warwick Farm stables of Gary Nickson are other contenders in the open sprint event.

Another one to watch on Friday will be debuting Hawkesbury trainer Fabio Martino.

Martino is set to make his first start as a trainer with four-year-old gelding Eliseo in the Spud's Skips Benchmark 58 Handicap (1115m).

Formerly trained by James Ponsonby, Eliseo scored two wins in 10 starts before the recent move to Martino's stables.

The first of eight races is at 12.30pm on Friday.

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