By RUSSELL BENNETT
THE gusty winds tearing through the state today have ripped the hearts out of the organisers of the Cranbourne Cup, who were forced to cancel the $300,000 race this afternoon.
The 10-race meeting was postponed after just the first race on the card, with the strong winds – which were only predicted to get worse – deemed to have posed an unsafe health and safety risk.
Not only was Cranbourne’s showpiece race postponed, but so too was the $100,000 Apache Cat Classic.
Cranbourne Turf Club chief executive Neil Bainbridge described the situation as “devastating” but kept the door ajar for the Cup to be held on the night of 21 April next year – the official date the Cranbourne Turf Club celebrates its 150th anniversary.
“We’ll meet with Racing Victoria first thing tomorrow morning and have a look at when we can reschedule the Cranbourne Cup,” he said.
“The club has a desire to run the Cranbourne Cup – clearly it’s a very busy Spring Racing Carnival schedule and it’s not that easy to just put it on in a couple of days or a week or two’s time, so one of the options may be to run the same race and the same field at a different venue but the club’s preference is to run the Cranbourne Cup at Cranbourne.
“With that in mind it may even be an option that the club runs the Cup in Autumn… but that decision hasn’t been made yet either. There are a few scenarios that are playing through our minds at the moment.”
Mr Bainbridge said if the Cup was to be moved to Autumn, the club would try to hold it under lights “as a good point of difference”.
“The club does celebrate its official 150th anniversary on Friday night the 21st of April, so that would be a potential date – on the 150th anniversary of the club to run the $300,000 TAB Cranbourne Cup and also the $100,000 Procon Developments Apache Cat classic.
“That’d be good as part of the Browns Sawdust and Shavings night racing season but obviously today is a frustrating day and very disappointing.
“A lot of work goes into these days – it’s probably nine months of the year of planning and execution, and to think we had such a beautiful day yesterday. Today the wind just got to a level where the jockeys and stewards thought it was not safe to continue in those conditions. It’s really frustrating.”
Mr Bainbridge said the jockeys raised some initial concerns about the strong winds, which led to the stewards ultimately deciding that the meeting needed to be postponed.
“I think there’d be a lot of disappointed people (at the track today), as we are,” he said.
“But, like us, people are realists and realise that those winds are pretty strong and I think everyone understands that the decision was made and the reasons why it was made.
“I think, generally, people understand that safety has to come first. They understand the predicament the club is in and we thank them for their support and we’ll do our utmost to put on another Cranbourne Cup and another great day for our patrons.”
Mr Bainbridge said he’d never been involved in a race meeting that had to be called off due to strong winds.
“It’s just really frustrating that it happened on Cranbourne Cup day,” he said.
“It’s very disappointing and obviously it’ll be quite a costly exercise for the club. This is the club’s key meeting, which underwrites a lot of the financial performance for the year, and this year we’ll just need to work a little bit harder – which we’ll do – but obviously financially this is a significant hole.”
