Australian racing club the Gold Coast Turf has announced it is to have a race of bikini-clad women, as a novelty event for the first meeting of the summer season.
Inspired by the original semi-naked-women-come-racing-crossover – the Hollywood Park Bikini Beach Mile – the club is hoping to make this thoroughbred swimsuit-off an annual event, reports the Gold Coast Bulletin.
It was not universally welcomed in Queensland, with many believing it will take the popular, but already tacky destination, to a new low. However a poll conducted by the Bulletin offered conflicting evidence: 39% of respondents said the gimmick was degrading but 61% considered the concept of women dressed only in bikinis running down a horse track for the purposes of gambling perfectly acceptable.
Comprehensively organised, the Gold Coast Turf Club is insistent this is no poorly thought-out titillation-dash, claiming that up to 150 women, who will have to wear bikinis (and running shoes), will compete through a knockout system for a first prize of A$5,000 (£3,000).
The Turf Club chief executive, Grant Sheather, acknowledged some may see the event as degrading, but said it would be done in “good taste.”
“When people say ‘Gold Coast’ you think of beach, you think of girls and you think of bikinis,” he said, before remembering the script. “It’s a marketing ploy to build racing,” he added. – guardian
