They're on - or off, as the course caller puts it

HOW has Brooke Sexton, a clerk of the course at Royal Randwick, spent her days while Sydney racing has been tucked up in bed with a sniffly nose because of this wretched equine influenza?

"I've been doing basically nothing," she said. "Getting fat and drinking cocktails."
Sexton, 25, can laugh now but it has been tough for her and hundreds of others whose working lives were brought to a sudden halt on August 17 - the day EI was diagnosed in Sydney. The highly contagious disease swept through the state like a bushfire.

But racing returns to Royal Randwick this afternoon and about 30,000 people are expected at the course. Punting will not be easy but a clash between the world-class sprinter Takeover Target and the 2004 Golden Slipper winner, Dance Hero, will be a thriller. It seems everyone, from jockeys to barrier attendants to punters, mugs to the informed, is resuming after a 98-day spell.

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