Premier SA racecourse has a new inner track

By John Satterley

A major redevelopment of the main track was completed in 2002 along with a wetland and aquifer storage recovery scheme providing reclaimed stormwater for track irrigation. Fill from the wetland project was used at that time for building up the track cambers.
Now ASPM has a second turf track known as The Parks that was used for the first time on June 17. Costing $7.2m it has a circumference of 2100m, a 320m straight and can accommodate 14 runners. It will enable the SAJC to conduct up to 70 race meetings a year.
Completed in February
Work on The Parks started mid-September 2008 and was completed mid-February 2009. Project superintendent FMG Engineering adopted the same broad design principles as for the course proper (circ. 2339m and 334m straight) redevelopment.
“The design of The Parks and the subgrade earthworks drainage and growing medium are identical to the course proper that has performed exceptionally well since 2002,” says superintendent representative Jeremy Clapp.
Adopting the same growing medium, 270mm thick sandy loam, means that staff will not have to change fertiliser or maintenance regimes.
A first task was to construct a new synthetic all-weather training track, 1900m x 10m wide to replace an existing one running alongside a deep drainage swale and on the alignment of The Parks.
The civil works and the drainage infrastructure for this track had to be designed and then constructed before the old one was demolished.
Supply of the growing medium and subsequent placement to The Parks track could have been an issue because deliveries of the growing medium were significantly slower than the contractor’s ability to place material on the track.
Mount Morphettville
“So from the very start of the project we established a site stockpile, ‘Mount Morphettville’, and imported 45,000t of growing medium during the civil construction for later placement,” Clapp says.
A large enough supply of turf, 75,000m2 of Kikuyu, was sourced from near Sydney. The 1.2m wide rolls came in B doubles that had to be split at Murray Bridge for transport to the metropolitan area.
Clapp says more than 80,000m2 of Kikuyu laid in 2002 came from a turf farm at Murray Bridge, since closed, so logistics weren’t an issue then.
Because The Parks turf arrived at the height of summer, some initial deliveries were heat affected. The use of refrigerated transport overcame this.
The subgrade was a bulk earthworks cut to fill exercise. A borrow pit established on site provided earthworks to camber the track. Subsurface drainage was built in a half-herringbone pattern and connected into the course-proper drainage collection system.
Where vehicles cross the tracks to the centre of the facility, is a no fines concrete base, that is a stable subgrade ensuring free drainage to the track crossing, especially during winter.
A peak workforce of 25 comprised irrigators, turf layers, pipe layers and plant operators. Plant used included two laser plane equipped tractors, three excavators, a trenching machine, two articulated dump trucks, loaders and water carts.
Inner loop, outer loop
The Parks, being on the inside of another track, has an inner loop and an outer loop to provide the required straights and starts with no outer perimeter chutes. Conduits are at 200m centres on the track for sectional timing, and a conduit and pit system on the outside of the track is for future track lighting.
Steriline Racing designed and installed a hydraulically operated winning post for the course proper that can fold flat out of line of sight of the inner track.
Considerable new irrigation has been installed for the various track works. The Parks track comprises more than 5200m of 150mm ring mains supplying pop-up sprinklers on the inside and outside of the track.
Where chutes merge on the track and coverage cannot be achieved, four portable sprinklers are set up. All of the irrigation water is from the site bores that are supplied and recharged through winter with treated stormwater from the wetlands.
Clapp says recent race meets confirm that horses on The Parks “have a fair chance from wherever they are positioned coming into the home turn”.
Client: South Australian Jockey Club
Design & documentation: FMG Engineering
Superintendent: FMG Engineering
Superintendent’s representative: Jeremy Clapp
Irrigation design: Aquatek Irrigation
Contractor: McMahons p/l
Growing medium supply: Sloan Sands
Turf supply: M Collins & Sons
Liaison with contractor: SAJC track manager John Tonani