THE Gold Coast surface for the Magic Millions on Saturday will be good despite recent rain, Gold Coast Turf Club racecourse manager Jeff Haynes says.

"There is no doubt we have had a bit of a flogging of late but the forecast for this week looks promising so we hope to offer up a good track for our feature meeting of the year," he said yesterday.

Haynes was formerly the racecourse manager of the Australian Jockey Club at Warwick Farm and Randwick before leaving when turf consultants Turnpoint were brought in as contractors.

"The weather is a bit different up here than what it was in Sydney," Haynes said. "And over the last week we've copped plenty of rain and summer storms."

Riders at the Gold Coast meeting at the weekend navigated passages closer to the outside fence than the inside rail after what was originally rated as a Dead (5) surface before the meeting was downgraded to a Heavy (9).

"We had 31 millimetres of rain up until race two and then it stopped raining," Haynes said. "After also having a meeting here on New Year's Day on a rain-affected track we obviously took a bit of punishment but the track has coped reasonably well.

"We'll put the moveable rail out 1.5 metres on Saturday just to get away from the inside section that was very wet on Saturday."

Sydney trainer Gary Portelli said he hoped Haynes's prediction of a dry track would prove correct with talented two-year-old Koblenz set to tackle the $2 million Magic Millions Classic, with Corey Brown to ride.

Portelli will also saddle Belle Soleil in the Magic Millions Trophy for three-year-olds with Glyn Schofield booked for that ride.

"Koblenz has never seen a wet track so it would not be ideal to be on one for the first time in a race as big as the Magic Millions," Portelli said of his charge, which has had two starts for two seconds, the latest behind Shadow Assassin at Randwick on Boxing Day.